Work Hard And Advertise Quotes

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Customers are becoming more and more concerned about the environment. They don’t want to associate themselves with any product or brand which is not working hard to protect the environment.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
A farmer is a magician who produces money from the mud.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
During your struggle society is not a bunch of flowers, it is a bunch of cactus.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
The smell of the sweat is not sweet, but the fruit of the sweat is very sweet.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
The hallmarks of a potentially successful copywriter include: Obsessive curiosity about products, people and advertising. A sense of humor. A habit of hard work. The ability to write interesting prose for printed media, and natural dialogue for television. The ability to think visually. Television commercials depend more on pictures than words. The ambition to write better campaigns than anyone has ever written before.
David Ogilvy (Ogilvy on Advertising)
If the farmer is rich, then so is the nation.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
Not long ago, I advertised for perverse rules of grammar, along the lines of "Remember to never split an infinitive" and "The passive voice should never be used." The notion of making a mistake while laying down rules ("Thimk," "We Never Make Misteaks") is highly unoriginal, and it turns out that English teachers have been circulating lists of fumblerules for years. As owner of the world's largest collection, and with thanks to scores of readers, let me pass along a bunch of these never-say-neverisms: * Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read. * Don't use no double negatives. * Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't. * Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it when its not needed. * Do not put statements in the negative form. * Verbs has to agree with their subjects. * No sentence fragments. * Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. * Avoid commas, that are not necessary. * If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. * A writer must not shift your point of view. * Eschew dialect, irregardless. * And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. * Don't overuse exclamation marks!!! * Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. * Writers should always hyphenate between syllables and avoid un-necessary hyph-ens. * Write all adverbial forms correct. * Don't use contractions in formal writing. * Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. * It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms. * If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. * Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language. * Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixed metaphors. * Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. * Never, ever use repetitive redundancies. * Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. * If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole. * Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration. * Don't string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. * Always pick on the correct idiom. * "Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'" * The adverb always follows the verb. * Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives." (New York Times, November 4, 1979; later also published in book form)
William Safire (Fumblerules: A Lighthearted Guide to Grammar and Good Usage)
What luck has gave you will probably leave you.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
In the past, being successful meant working hard and being smart.  In the future, success will be the ability to ignore advertisements and to disconnect from social media long enough to actually create something of value.  If you believe in yourself, if you cultivate focus, you will arrive at the finish line of self-sufficiency and abundance.
Markus Almond (Brooklyn To Mars: Volume One)
Anyone and everyone taking a writing class knows that the secret of good writing is to cut it back, pare it down, winnow, chop, hack, prune, and trim, remove every superfluous word, compress, compress, compress... Actually, when you think about it, not many novels in the Spare tradition are terribly cheerful. Jokes you can usually pluck out whole, by the roots, so if you're doing some heavy-duty prose-weeding, they're the first to go. And there's some stuff about the whole winnowing process I just don't get. Why does it always stop when the work in question has been reduced to sixty or seventy thousand words--entirely coincidentally, I'm sure, the minimum length for a publishable novel? I'm sure you could get it down to twenty or thirty if you tried hard enough. In fact, why stop at twenty or thirty? Why write at all? Why not just jot the plot and a couple of themes down on the back of an envelope and leave it at that? The truth is, there's nothing very utilitarian about fiction or its creation, and I suspect that people are desperate to make it sound manly, back-breaking labor because it's such a wussy thing to do in the first place. The obsession with austerity is an attempt to compensate, to make writing resemble a real job, like farming, or logging. (It's also why people who work in advertising put in twenty-hour days.) Go on, young writers--treat yourself to a joke, or an adverb! Spoil yourself! Readers won't mind!
Nick Hornby (The Polysyllabic Spree)
The interesting thing about the New Albion was that it was so completely modern in spirit. There was hardly a soul in the firm who was not perfectly well aware that publicity - advertising - is the dirtiest ramp that capitalism has yet produced. In the red lead firm there had still lingered certain notions of commercial honour and usefulness. But such things would have been laughed at in the New Albion. Most of the employees were the hard-boiled, Americanized, go-getting type to whom nothing in the world is sacred, except money. They had their cynical code worked out. The public are swine; advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket. And yet beneath their cynicism there was the final naivete, the blind worship of the money-god.
George Orwell (Keep the Aspidistra Flying)
Hard work, says the Scottish proverb, never killed a man. People die of boredom and disease. There is nothing like an occasional all-night push to enliven morale – provided you are part of the push. Never leave the bridge in a storm.
David Ogilvy (Ogilvy on Advertising)
Hard work, says the Scottish proverb, never killed a man.
David Ogilvy (Ogilvy on Advertising)
One who doesn't recognise an opportunity is bigger loser than one who tries his hand at an opportunity.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
To a farmer dirt is not a waste, it is wealth.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
So what's your doll's name?" Boo asked me. "Barbie," I said. "All their names are Barbie." "I see," she said. "Well, I'd think that would get boring, everyone having the same name." I thought about this, then said, "Okay, then her name is Sabrina." "Well, that's a very nice name," Boo said. I remember she was baking bread, kneading the dough between her thick fingers. "What does she do?" "Do?" I said. "Yes." She flipped the dough over and started in on it from the other side. "What does she do?" "She goes out with Ken," I said. "And what else?" "She goes to parties," I said slowly. "And shopping." "Oh," Boo said, nodding. "She can't work?" "She doesn't have to work," I said. "Why not?" "Because she's Barbie." "I hate to tell you, Caitlin, but somebody has to make payments on that town house and the Corvette," Boo said cheerfully. "Unless Barbie has a lot of family money." I considered this while I put on Ken's pants. Boo started pushing the dough into a pan, smoothing it with her hand over the top. "You know what I think, Caitlin?" Her voice was soft and nice, the way she always spoke to me. "What?" "I think your Barbie can go shopping, and go out with Ken, and also have a productive and satisfying career of her own." She opened the oven and slid in the bread pan, adjusting its position on the rack. "But what can she do?" My mother didn't work and spent her time cleaning the house and going to PTA. I couldn't imagine Barbie, whose most casual outfit had sequins and go-go boots, doing s.uch things. Boo came over and plopped right down beside me. I always remember her being on my level; she'd sit on the edge of the sandbox, or lie across her bed with me and Cass as we listened to the radio. "Well," she said thoughtfully, picking up Ken and examining his perfect physique. "What do you want to do when you grow up?" I remember this moment so well; I can still see Boo sitting there on the floor, cross- legged, holding my Ken and watching my face as she tried to make me see that between my mother's PTA and Boo's strange ways there was a middle ground that began here with my Barbie, Sab-rina, and led right to me. "Well," I said abruptly, "I want to be in advertising." I have no idea where this came from. "Advertising," Boo repeated, nodding. "Okay. Advertising it is. So Sabrina has to go to work every day, coming up with ideas for commercials and things like that." "She works in an office," I went on. "Sometimes she has to work late." "Sure she does," Boo said. "It's hard to get ahead. Even if you're Barbie." "Because she wants to get promoted," I added. "So she can pay off the town house. And the Corvette." "Very responsible of her," Boo said. "Can she be divorced?" I asked. "And famous for her commercials and ideas?" "She can be anything," Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled face so solemn, as if she knew she was the first to tell me. "And so can you.
Sarah Dessen (Dreamland)
If a thing is useful they call it work, if useless they call it play. One is as hard as the other. One can be just as much a game as the other. In both there is rivalry. There’s a struggle to excel the rest. All the difference I see lies in attitude of mind.
Claude C. Hopkins (My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising (Advertising Age Classics Library))
Don't wait, just sweat.
Amit Kalantri
Action achieves ambition.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
The hard work and big money you used to spend on frequent purchases of print and TV advertising now move to repeated engineering expenses and product failures. If anything, marketing is more time-consuming and expensive than it used to be. You’re just spending the money earlier in the process (and repeating the process more often). This is worth highlighting: The Purple Cow is not a cheap shortcut. It is, however, your best (perhaps only) strategy for growth.
Seth Godin (Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable)
I wanted to tell Sam this. I wanted to tell him all of it, in beautiful handwritten letters or at least in long, rambling emails that we would later save and print out and that would be found in the attic of our house when we had been married fifty years for our grandchildren to coo over. But I was so tired those first few weeks that all I did was email him about how tired I was. I'm so tired. I miss you. Me too. No, like really, really tired. Like cry at TV advertisements and fall asleep while brushing my teeth and end up with toothpaste all over my chest tired. Okay, now you got me. I tried not to mind how little he emailed me. I tried to remind myself that he was doing a real, hard job, saving lives and making a difference, while I was sitting outside manicurists' studios and running around Central Park. His supervisor had changed the rota. He was working four nights on the trot and still waiting to be assigned a new permanent partner. That should have made it easier for us to talk but somehow it didn't. I would check in on my phone in the minutes I had free every evening but that was usually the time he was heading off to begin his shift. Sometimes I felt curiously disjointed, as if I had simply dreamt him up. One week, he reassured me. One more week. How hard could it be?
Jojo Moyes (Still Me (Me Before You, #3))
When I was in the advertising business, I used to offer free seminars to advertisers about how to create better ads (the material in this chapter being the content). That was not so long ago, but since then the Internet has ballooned to major significance. If I were selling advertising today, I’d have that seminar online. Think of how this cuts down on your travel expenses. I used to fly all over creation to deliver those seminars. And appointments were harder to get. The education-based marketing concept that you learned in Chapter Four works hand in glove with the ability to do things over the Internet. Here’s the pitch I’d do today: “How would you like to learn to make your advertising literally 10 times more effective? And you can do it right from the comfort of your favorite office chair.” It’s hard to resist such an offer. There are many examples I could give you to flesh out the model of turning your Web site into a community. The examples below are simple and some are even silly, but each shows how far this concept can go and how it helps you capture more leads and build a better brand.
Chet Holmes (The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies)
Cheaters do not advertise their cheating and are very private about it, so it is always hard to prove it. Most of the time it is happening under the guise of a friend, a friend visiting town, friends from the past, neighborhood friends, vacations with friends, shopping trips, long walks alone, time spent at the gym, coworkers, faking going to work on sick, comp time, or vacation days, company overtime, company emergency, company conferences, and so on.
Steven Magee
This lad is an elite European coach. One of a select group of about half a dozen managers working in the world game today. The other five only take jobs with clubs that guarantee squads and trophies that will further enhance their already muscular CVs. Klopp doesn’t seem to need that in his life. He is truly a throwback. A contradiction in many senses – for instance he seems to have no problem being a shameless shill in doing adverts for some heavy weight corporations (Puma, Opel and others) and yet it is hard to escape the conclusion that here is a man on a mission that represents something more honest.
Rob Gutmann
Too often when a publisher entertains an author at the midday meal a rather sombre note tinges the table talk. The host is apt to sigh a good deal and to choose as the theme of his remarks the hardness of the times, the stagnant condition of the book trade and the growing price of pulp paper. And when his guest tries to cheer him up by suggesting that these disadvantages may be offset by a spirited policy of publicity, he sighs again and says that eulogies of an author’s work displayed in the press at the publisher’s expense are of little or no value, the only advertising that counts being—how shall he put it—well, what he might perhaps describe as word-of-mouth advertising.
P.G. Wodehouse (Uncle Dynamite)
He left the classroom, left India and gave up. He returned to his Midwest, picked up a practical degree in journalism, married, lived in Nevada and Mexico, did odd jobs, worked as a journalist, a science writer and an industrial-advertising writer. He fathered two children, bought a farm and a riding horse and two cars and was starting to put on middle-aged weight. His pursuit of what has been called the ghost of reason had been given up. That’s extremely important to understand. He had given up. Because he’d given up, the surface of life was comfortable for him. He worked reasonably hard, was easy to get along with and, except for an occasional glimpse of inner emptiness shown in some short stories he wrote at the time, his days passed quite usually.
Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
Staying focused on the problem also prevents you from falling into the fatal trap of assuming the world is waiting with bated breath for your product to launch. When I used to work in advertising, we would joke that the “insight” in the creative brief was often something along the lines of, “I wish there were a crunchy cereal with raisins that was healthy and also delicious.” But people do not wish this. They might have a hard time finding a quick breakfast that doesn’t make them feel fat or sluggish. And maybe your crunchy raisin cereal is the perfect response to this issue. But they are not waking up in the morning wishing for raisiny, crunchy goodness. Similarly, people are not wishing for your idea to exist, because they don’t even know it’s an option. So when you sit down to clarify what problem you’re solving, a great initial test is to imagine someone’s inner monologue. Is the problem you’ve identified something that a real human might actually be thinking?
Jocelyn K. Glei (Make Your Mark)
The real crisis of capitalism is that product development lags so far behind the best insights of advertising. Since the 1960s, advertising has worked out just how much we need help with the true challenges of life. It has fathomed how deeply we want to have better careers, stronger relationships, greater confidence. In most adverts, the pain and the hope of our lives have been superbly identified, but the products are almost comically at odds with the problems at hand. Advertisers are hardly to blame. They are, in fact, the victims of an extraordinary problem of modern capitalism. While we have so many complex needs, we have nothing better to offer ourselves, in the face of our troubles, than, perhaps, a slightly more accurate chronometer or a more subtly blended perfume. Business needs to get more ambitious in the creation of new kinds of “products,” in their own way as strange-sounding today as a wristwatch would have been to observers in 1500. We need the drive of commerce to get behind filling the world—and our lives—with goods that really can help us to thrive, flourish, find contentment, and manage our relationships well.
The School of Life (The School of Life: An Emotional Education)
DOES HARVARD MAKE YOU SMARTER? Swimmer’s Body Illusion As essayist and trader Nassim Taleb resolved to do something about the stubborn extra pounds he’d be carrying, he contemplated taking up various sports. However, joggers seemed scrawny and unhappy, and bodybuilders looked broad and stupid, and tennis players? Oh, so upper-middle class! Swimmers, though, appealed to him with their well-built, streamlined bodies. He decided to sign up at his local swimming pool and to train hard twice a week. A short while later, he realised that he had succumbed to an illusion. Professional swimmers don’t have perfect bodies because they train extensively. Rather, they are good swimmers because of their physiques. How their bodies are designed is a factor for selection and not the result of their activities. Similarly, female models advertise cosmetics and thus, many female consumers believe that these products make you beautiful. But it is not the cosmetics that make these women model-like. Quite simply, the models are born attractive and only for this reason are they candidates for cosmetics advertising. As with the swimmers’ bodies, beauty is a factor for selection and not the result. Whenever we confuse selection factors with results, we fall prey to what Taleb calls the swimmer’s body illusion. Without this illusion, half of advertising campaigns would not work
Anonymous
1. First, we admire people who work hard. We dislike passengers who don’t pull their weight in the boat. 2. We admire people with first-class brains, because you cannot run a great advertising agency without brainy people. 3. We admire people who avoid politics – office politics, I mean. 4. We despise toadies who suck up to their bosses; they are generally the same people who bully their subordinates. 5. We admire the great professionals, the craftsmen who do their jobs with superlative excellence. We notice that these people always respect the professional expertise of their colleagues in other departments. 6. We admire people who hire subordinates who are good enough to succeed them. We pity people who are so insecure that they feel compelled to hire inferior specimens as their subordinates. 7. We admire people who build up and develop their subordinates, because this is the only way we can promote from within the ranks. We detest having to go outside to fill important jobs, and I look forward to the day when that will never be necessary. 8. We admire people who practice delegation. The more you delegate, the more responsibility will be loaded upon you. 9. We admire kindly people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings – particularly the people who sell things to us. We abhor quarrelsome people. We abhor people who wage paper warfare. We abhor buck passers, and people who don’t tell the truth. 10. We admire well-organized people who keep their offices shipshape, and deliver their work on time. 11. We admire people who are good citizens in their communities – people who work for their local hospitals, their church, the PTA, the Community Chest and so on.
David Ogilvy (The Unpublished David Ogilvy)
Evan was attracted to technology early on, building his first computer in sixth grade and experimenting with Photoshop in the Crossroads computer lab. He would later describe the computer teacher, Dan, as his best friend. Evan dove into journalism as well, writing for the school newspaper, Crossfire. One journalism class required students to sell a certain amount of advertising for Crossfire as part of their grade. Evan walked around the neighborhood asking local businesses to buy ads; once he had exceeded his sales goals, he helped coach his peers on how to pitch businesses and ask adults for money. By high school, the group of 20 students Evan had started with in kindergarten had grown to around 120. Charming, charismatic, and smart, Evan threw parties at his dad’s house that were “notorious” in his words. Evan’s outsized personality could rub people the wrong way at times, but his energy, organizing skills, and enthusiasm made him an exceptional party thrower. He possessed a bravado that could be frustrating and off-putting but was great for convincing everyone that the night’s party was going to be the greatest of all time. Obsessed with the energy drink Red Bull and the lifestyle the brand cultivated, Evan talked his way into an internship at the company as a senior in high school. The job involved throwing parties and other events sponsored by Red Bull. Clarence Carter, the head of the company’s security team, would give Evan advice that would stand him well in the years to come: pay attention to who helps you clean up after the party. Later recalling the story, Evan said, “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.
Billy Gallagher (How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story)
Employment Prayer II by Sonya I. Perkins As I embark on new areas in my life, I ask for the blessings and guidance of God, my ancestors, my spirit guides, and guardian angels. I ask for their blessings to guide me through this difficult period in my life. May I walk through this time with my head held high and with faith in myself and in spirit, and may I survive hard times as my ancestors survived hard times. I ask in the name of God for assistance in my search for suitable and gainful employment. I ask that my ancestors hear my pleas and put the right devices into my path, such as advertisements and people like recruiters, and that word of mouth reach my ears if the work is right for me. I ask that whatever opportunities are looking to find someone, let that opportunity find me, for I will be grateful for the blessing that opportunity will bequeath me. I ask that opportunity search and find me, as I have searched and searched for employment. They say opportunity knocks, but only one time. My eyes are open to see opportunity; my ears await the sound of opportunity knocking. I am ready to receive opportunity. I have patience, and I will continue to search for the job/career that is right for only me. I seek employment not just for a paycheck but also to be a productive, contributing member of my community. I ask for a suitable job, so that I may take care of my loved ones and myself. I ask for work to come to my hands so that I may feel and be useful. I ask that the people I work with be decent, friendly, hard working, and easy to get along with. I ask that I be compensated accordingly for the work that I provide. I ask that the job I secure will be something that I can look forward to doing on a daily basis. In the name of the divine providence, may my roads be opened and clear for me to find the right job. In the name of my spirit guides, I pray that the door of opportunity be opened to me as I try to become a more productive being. In the name of my guardian angel, I ask that you assist me during the hard times and help me to make it through until suitable employment is held securely in my hands. In the name of the most high and all that is light, I ask for these blessings for myself and for all those in search of employment for the betterment of all. So it was spoken, so it shall be.  Àṣe o!
Oba Ilari Aladokun (Ancestor Paths: Honoring our Ancestors and Guardian Spirits Through Prayers, Rituals, and Offerings)
The most visible feature of self-oriented perfectionism is this hypercompetitive streak fused to a sense of never being good enough. Hypercompetitiveness reflects a paradox because people high in self-oriented perfectionism can recoil from competition due to fear of failure and fear of losing other people's approval. Socially-prescribed perfectionism makes for a hugely pressured life, spent at the whim of everyone else's opinions, trying desperately to be somebody else, somebody perfect. Perfectionism lurks beneath the surface of mental distress. Someone who scores high on perfectionism also scores high on anxiety. The ill-effects of self-oriented perfectionism correlate with anxiety and it predicts increases in depression over time. There are links between other-oriented perfectionism and higher vindictiveness, a grandiose desire for admiration and hostility toward others, as well as lower altruism, compliance with social norms and trust. People with high levels of socially-prescribed perfectionism typically report elevated loneliness, worry about the future, need for approval, poor-quality relationships, rumination and brooding, fears of revealing imperfections to others, self-harm, worse physical health, lower life satisfaction and chronically low self-esteem. Perfectionism makes people extremely insecure, self-conscious and vulnerable to even the smallest hassles. Perfection is man's ultimate illusion. It simply doesn't exist in the universe. If you are a perfectionist, you are guaranteed to be a loser in whatever you do. Socially-prescribed perfectionism has an astonishingly strong link with burnout. What I don't have - or how perfectionism grows in the soil of our manufactured discontent. No matter what the advertisement says, you will go on with your imperfect existence whether you make that purchase or not. And that existence is - can only ever be - enough. Make a promise to be kind to yourself, taking ownership of your imperfections, recognizing your shared humanity and understanding that no matter how hard your culture works to teach you otherwise, no one is perfect and everyone has an imperfect life. Socially-prescribed perfectionism is the emblem of consumer culture. Research shows that roaming outside, especially in new places, contributes to enhanced well-being. Other benefits of getting out there in nature include improved attention, lower stress, better mood, reduced risk of psychiatric disorders and even upticks in empathy and cooperation. Perfection is not necessary to live an active and fulfilling life.
Thomas Curran (The Perfection Trap: Embracing the Power of Good Enough)
If you can harness anger to good effect – be angry that food manufacturers are doing everything that they can to get you to eat as much of their rubbish as possible. They are advertising to you – overtly and subconsciously; they are working hard to make their products irresistible and moreish. Be very angry about this – not just what they are doing to you – but to our next generation. Be determined not to give them a penny of your hard earned cash – you can then gain health and wealth.
Zoe Harcombe (Why Do You Overeat? When All You Want Is To Be Slim)
Why are you doing this? Ever find yourself working on something without knowing exactly why? Someone just told you to do it. It’s pretty common, actually. That’s why it’s important to ask why you’re working on____. What is this for? Who benefits? What’s the motivation behind it? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you better understand the work itself. What problem are you solving? What’s the problem? Are customers confused? Are you confused? Is something not clear enough? Was something not possible before that should be possible now? Sometimes when you ask these questions, you’ll find you’re solving an imaginary problem. That’s when it’s time to stop and reevaluate what the hell you’re doing. Is this actually useful? Are you making something useful or just making something? It’s easy to confuse enthusiasm with usefulness. Sometimes it’s fine to play a bit and build something cool. But eventually you’ve got to stop and ask yourself if it’s useful, too. Cool wears off. Useful never does. Are you adding value? Adding something is easy; adding value is hard. Is this thing you’re working on actually making your product more valuable for customers? Can they get more out of it than they did before? Sometimes things you think are adding value actually subtract from it. Too much ketchup can ruin the fries. Value is about balance. Will this change behavior? Is what you’re working on really going to change anything? Don’t add something unless it has a real impact on how people use your product. Is there an easier way? Whenever you’re working on something, ask, “Is there an easier way?” You’ll often find this easy way is more than good enough for now. Problems are usually pretty simple. We just imagine that they require hard solutions. What could you be doing instead? What can’t you do because you’re doing this? This is especially important for small teams with constrained resources. That’s when prioritization is even more important. If you work on A, can you still do B and C before April? If not, would you rather have B and C instead of A? If you’re stuck on something for a long period of time, that means there are other things you’re not getting done. Is it really worth it? Is what you’re doing really worth it? Is this meeting worth pulling six people off their work for an hour? Is it worth pulling an all-nighter tonight, or could you just finish it up tomorrow? Is it worth getting all stressed out over a press release from a competitor? Is it worth spending your money on advertising? Determine the real value of what you’re about to do before taking the plunge.
Jason Fried (Rework)
A thoroughly socialized person is one who desires only the rewards that others around him have agreed he should long for—rewards often grafted onto genetically programmed desires. He may encounter thousands of potentially fulfilling experiences, but he fails to notice them because they are not the things he desires. What matters is not what he has now, but what he might obtain if he does as others want him to do. Caught in the treadmill of social controls, that person keeps reaching for a prize that always dissolves in his hands. In a complex society, many powerful groups are involved in socializing, sometimes to seemingly contradictory goals. On the one hand, official institutions like schools, churches, and banks try to turn us into responsible citizens willing to work hard and save. On the other hand, we are constantly cajoled by merchants, manufacturers, and advertisers to spend our earnings on products that will produce the most profits for them. And, finally, the underground system of forbidden pleasures run by gamblers, pimps, and drug dealers, which is dialectically linked to the official institutions, promises its own rewards of easy dissipation—provided we pay. The messages are very different, but their outcome is essentially the same: they make us dependent on a social system that exploits our energies for its own purposes.
Anonymous
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Rajarshi Solutions
I began shopping at the bankruptcy attorney’s office, or the courthouse steps. In these shopping places, a $75,000 house could sometimes be bought for $20,000 or less. For $2,000, which was loaned to me from a friend for 90 days for $200, I gave an attorney a cashier’s check as a down payment. While the acquisition was being processed, I ran an ad advertising a $75,000 house for only $60,000 and no money down. The phone rang hard and heavy. Prospective buyers were screened and once the property was legally mine, all the prospective buyers were allowed to look at the house. It was a feeding frenzy. The house sold in a few minutes. I asked for a $2,500 processing fee, which they gladly handed over, and the escrow and title company took over from there. I returned the $2,000 to my friend with an additional $200. He was happy, the home buyer was happy, the attorney was happy, and I was happy. I had sold a house for $60,000 that cost me $20,000. The $40,000 was created from money in my asset column in the form of a promissory note from the buyer. Total working time: five hours.
Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money - That The Poor And Middle Class Do Not!)
Bill Phillips, one of his successors as chairman, captured the spirit in his mantra: “Work hard. Play hard. Sleep fast.
Kenneth Roman (The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising)
MYTH-1: Handmade items are costly! The items are modest yet the commitment of the craftsmen behind the items we offer is costly The vast majority of the cycles engaged with making the item are finished by the creator – the plan, however, the choice of the materials, the working out of how to cause the materials to go together, gathering the item, capturing the item, advertising the item, planning the bundling, and posting, conveying, or action selling. In spite of this, the items that the fasten organization offers you are truly sensible. Haven't viewed our list? here you go! (click here) Have you ever discovered such wonderful hand-made items at such modest rates?? I GUESS NOT! MYTH-2: HAND-MADE PRODUCTS ARE NOT STYLISH On the off chance that you believe that way, I have an inquiry for you – did your grandmother convey such a shopping pack when went out to get for food supplies or did she have such telephone and individual embellishment sacks? Certainly not. The crafted works are not, at this point unfashionable or old-fashioned. Actually, they are intended for pioneers. Simply being an aspect of the pattern and following it has neither rhyme nor reason. Be the person who sets it MYTH-3: HANDMADE GOODS ARE OF POOR QUALITY I can't envision how individuals have such misguided judgment. The machine-made merchandise is to some degree bargained with quality. In any case, with regards to hand made items, they are taken well consideration of by the craftsmen as referenced above, there is no trade-off with the quality. They are made of cotton and jute which are solid and strong. They are lightweight and simple to deal with. MYTH-4: THEY ARE SAME OLD PATTERNS You can't quit lecturing about the handcrafted items which are extremely extraordinary as it will never be equivalent to some other the explanation being that they are delivered by the hands of a craftsman and not a machine. The sack so made is a result of devotion, love, energy, and the enthusiasm to serve the client. Individuals love block prints due to the strong and straightforward plans that can be made, yet that effortlessness finds a way to accomplish. The strategy is brilliant for pictures with only a couple of tones and fewer subtleties however can be hard to use for pictures with bunches of little content, or extremely fine subtleties that will, in general, sever the square with such a large number of employments. One of the benefits of square printing is that it very well may be done on a surface of practically any size and surface. I print on texture, paper, canvas, wood, and different materials, and you don't need to stress over fitting it through a printer or a press. MYTH-5: HANDMADE PRODUCTS ARE NOT LONG LASTING Recollect the last cowhide sack you had? Which lost its covering not long after getting wet in a downpour or subsequent to utilizing it for 3-4 times. That is not the situation with hand-made cotton packs. They are launderable which makes it look clean with each utilization. No problem with the upkeep.
The Stitch Company
Entirely in agreement with Salieri when he rails against God for having given humanity the gift of Mozart's divine music, for the sole purpose of making us look ridiculous and plunging us into despair. Salieri sets himself up as Man's champion against divine injustice. It is the same problem as that of the Grand Inquisitor in the Brothers Karamazov. When Christ returns to earth he says to him: 'We manage humanity for its greatest happiness. It has paid for this with its mediocrity. Don't come disturbing this fragile balance with insane promises. ' And he condemns Christ to death once again. Salieri is not mean-spirited: it took pride, not to become jealous of Mozart, but to challenge God and ask: 'Tell it to me plainly, why am I not Mozart?' For God mocked us by throwing Mozart among us in the guise of a vulgar being, who did not even bear the exceptional marks of grace. God is toying with us, and that is unbearable. Mozart must be destroyed. All that challenges God is noble in spirit and superior to gaping, unconditional admiration of His works. We will not have the same problem with Changeux's Neuronal Man, emerging on the horizon like Nietzsche's Last Man, with his cortical and synaptic flatness. Farewell Mozart, farewell Salieri, no more grace, but no more challenges either, such is the solution offered by modern science to the insoluble despair of the difference between men. Signs, signs? Is that all you have to say? People act and people dream, they speak or they don't - none of that is unreal. Shut up and watch. See the philosophical beauty of these closing years of the century, the stars in the sky falling lower as the fateful date approaches, and the interactive horizon of couples in love - all this is beyond doubt, and it moves me to tears . . . The age, the coming age is like a metropolis deserted by its population, cut off from its sources of energy. Are you going to say that, are you going to go on with these twilight rantings? Every century throws the reality principle into question as it closes, but it's over today, finished, done. Everybody works these days. Narrative and moral passions, the philosophical animal spirits, are literally blocking the electronic animal spirits, a thousand times more lively and insignificant. Videos and advertisements, credits, news reports and sports flashes, Dallas, that's television, all that transfers easily, with the minimum of energy, on ephemeral film. But pure television, like pure painting or pure speed, is hard to bear.
Jean Baudrillard (Cool Memories)
College was now a customer experience, not a pedagogical one; and what the college customer wanted was only what had been advertised to lure them: physical comforts, moral reassurance, unceasing approbation. Mary believed deep down they knew it was a con, knew they were marks, knew not to trust a world that was now nothing more than a marketplace--but no trust in the world meant they had no basis for trusting themselves. Her students spent so much of their time in class--when they weren't on their phones--wondering what was real that it was hard to arrive at a discussion of anything substantial. Platitudes and pornography commanded their days. As she saw it, much of her work now was about teaching them cognitive basics: how to recognize what was worth paying attention to; how to suffer through boredom; how to discern rhetoric from reality, discomfort from defense.
Ayad Akhtar (Homeland Elegies)
Do You Need Resume Writing Services? Getting a job can be hard. It doesn't have to be! We can help you find a job that's perfect for you and match your skills. We offer resume writing services, career development services, and much more. Contact us today! Resume writing services canada Do you have trouble finding work because your resume is unimpressive? Get your resume to stand out by contacting our Canada-based services. The best resumes in your field are only available with us, from top rated experts. Career Development Services Having your resume written by an expert can be expensive, but could lead to success in your job search. Job seekers might find that they're more confident when applying for jobs and will have an edge over other candidates who are trying to get their resumes approved. Writing Your Resume Your resume is more than just an advertisement for your skills. It is also an opportunity to tell employers who you are as person and why they should hire you. Your resume is not only about what skills you have or what jobs you've had in the past, but it's also about who you are. The Best Way to Edit Your Resume Many of us have never had to put together our own resume. It's something that most people only do when they are first looking for work, or in some cases, if they need to update their resume for various reasons. Here are some tips to help you better edit your resume: - Leave off all information that is not absolutely necessary. - Be concise.
The Adee
Advertising and self-improvement dogma would have us all believe that if we work hard enough and tirelessly on mind/body/soul, we can not only achieve perfection but become our “best selves.” But that’s as much a myth as, say, the unicorn that lives in your backyard.
Lisa Haisha
No publisher. No agent. They had told him that sales had not been good. Markets had changed. Same old shit. Well, fuck them. Fuck them all. Something different was needed, apparently. Something original but easily pigeon-holed. Books by celebrities were very popular. Models, second-rate comedians, has-been soap stars (those that weren’t trying to make it in the music business), even footballers were writing books. Any talentless cunt with enough money to pay a ghost-writer and a good editor was capable of churning out a book and earning shit-loads of cash for it. And then there were the household names who milked their own brand of repetitious bullshit while fawning publishers knelt at their feet to push ever-larger cheques into their grasping hands. Add to these the comfortable middle-class writers who lectured on real life from the security of knowing it was a world they would never have to inhabit. People with millions in the bank who crowed that money wasn’t everything, who complained about invasion of privacy during their six-page interviews, who were proud of how they’d been single mothers or record-shop employees or advertising men before they’d made it big. And who whined about how hard they’d had to work to get published when all it took was a generous publisher and an even more generous publicity department. Ward despised them all. Even when he’d been successful he’d despised them. The whole fucking business stank. It stank of cowardice. Of duplicity. Of betrayal.
Shaun Hutson (Hybrid (Heathen, #2))
Overcrowding works in a different way for creators than for viewers. For creators, the problem becomes—how do you stand out? How do you get your videos watched? This is particularly acute for new creators, who face a “rich get richer” phenomenon. Across many categories of networked products, when early users join a network and start producing value, algorithms naturally reward them—and this is a good thing. When they do a good job, perhaps they earn five-star ratings, or they quickly gain lots of followers. Perhaps they get featured, or are ranked highly in popularity lists. This helps consumers find what they want, quickly, but the downside is that the already popular just get more popular. Eventually, the problem becomes, how does a new member of the network break in? If everyone else has millions of followers, or thousands of five-star reviews, it can be hard. Eugene Wei, former CTO of Hulu and noted product thinker, writes about the “Old Money” in the context of social networks, arguing that established networks are harder for new users to break into: Some networks reward those who gain a lot of followers early on with so much added exposure that they continue to gain more followers than other users, regardless of whether they’ve earned it through the quality of their posts. One hypothesis on why social networks tend to lose heat at scale is that this type of old money can’t be cleared out, and new money loses the incentive to play the game. It’s not that the existence of old money or old social capital dooms a social network to inevitable stagnation, but a social network should continue to prioritize distribution for the best content, whatever the definition of quality, regardless of the vintage of user producing it. Otherwise a form of social capital inequality sets in, and in the virtual world, where exit costs are much lower than in the real world, new users can easily leave for a new network where their work is more properly rewarded and where status mobility is higher.75 This is true for social networks and also true for marketplaces, app stores, and other networked products as well. Ratings systems, reviews, followers, advertising systems all reinforce this, giving the most established members of a network dominance over everyone else. High-quality users hogging all of the attention is the good version of the problem, but the bad version is much more problematic: What happens, particularly for social products, when the most controversial and opinionated users are rewarded with positive feedback loops? Or when purveyors of low-quality apps in a developer platform—like the Apple AppStore’s initial proliferation of fart apps—are downloaded by users and ranked highly in charts? Ultimately, these loops need to be broken; otherwise your network may go in a direction you don’t want.
Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
[Our Contemporary Lexicon] As years go by And lives are wasted, As we lose everything, We discover the real meaning Of the words shaping our lives… Words that have filled our contemporary lexicon, We know the words yet don’t fully grasp them, And the more we hear them, The more confusing they become… Words like War Bank Justice Media Capital Investment Advertisement Weapon School University Hospital Humanitarian organization Civil society Ethnicity Race Religion Modernity Backwardness Secularism Trade Love Family Prison Home Immigration Visa Passport Borders Democracy Elections Car Plane And countless others… Words that may pretend to oppose each other publicly, Yet are secretly in bed with each other Making love, acting as synonyms and French kissing… Words that in reality Walk hand in hand and are united against us To achieve the mutual goal of depriving most of us Of having a decent life with dignity… Words used by allies and foes alike, as needed! Words that have become rustier than our souls, Yet their fake glitter continues to deceive millions upon billions Of people believing faithfully in them Or working hard to access their imagined benefits... As years go by, We learn late in the game That all the meanings we ascribed to such words Are in fact killing us Raping us In the homeland On the border And in exile! As the game continues, At a late hour, We discover that Our worries and sleepless nights In hopes of a bearable world Have all been wasted in vain… What is happening today Has happened throughout history… And the game shall continue Until we reexamine this lexicon Until we destroy it And rewrite all its pages To erase all the monsters its words Within all of us… (February 6, 2015)
Louis Yako (أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower])
Most of the employees were the hard-boiled, Americanised, go-getting type – the type to whom nothing in the world is sacred, except money. They had their cynical code worked out. The public are swine; advertising is the rattling of a stick inside of a swill-bucket.
George Orwell (Keep the Aspidistra Flying)
Advertisers loved her, brands were eager to work with her. She was entirely real and that was hard to come by online. Where the whole world looked fake, she wasn’t.
Melissa de la Cruz (Going Dark)
It's not about broadcasting that you work hard, sometimes it's a way to find the motivation to keep working hard.
Sarvesh Jain
During this psychological transformation, the ordinary anchors of everyday life fell away for many working Americans. Family, community, tradition, and certainty were shaken apart by the economic force of the new—urban, postindustrial, and corporate—brand of capitalism. The sense of a person's self, which had previously been socially defined, moved into the interior of each individual's life and mind. Gradually, another concept of the self emerged as capitalism moved into this new stage, and sales or leisured consumption replaced the older emphasis on production and honest, hard work. This transition marked a shift toward a new type of person, one “predicated on the effectiveness of sales technique or the attractiveness of the individual salesperson. Personal magnetism replaced craftsmanship; technique replaced moral integrity.”85 The pervasive anxiety of this era led Americans to look for leadership anywhere they could find it. Three new areas promised relief. First, a new, popular psychology of personality offered to teach Americans how to transform themselves into people with “an intensely private sense of well being.” Self-pleasure and self-satisfaction now became the purpose of individual existence rather than a by-product of a well-lived life, and this ideology conveniently dovetailed with the new consumerism.86 Not surprisingly, then, a second transformative force emerged as the emerging field of advertising co-opted psychology and drafted psychologists like John B. Watson, A. A. Brill, and Sigmund Freud's brilliant nephew Edward Bernays into its well-paying service. On the advice and example of these men, copywriters began to suggest to consumers that they could transform their position in the social and business hierarchy by buying and displaying the correct products and behaviors. The new generation of ads was highly motivational.
Giles Slade (Big Disconnect: The Story of Technology and Loneliness (Contemporary Issues))
but most of them had never worked with captive populations before. They didn’t know how to cuff someone at the wrist and elbow so that the perp couldn’t get his hands out in front to strangle them. They didn’t know how to restrain someone with a length of cord around the neck so that the prisoner couldn’t choke himself to death, by accident or intentionally. Half of them didn’t even know how to pat someone down. Miller knew all of it like a game he’d played since childhood. In five hours, he found twenty hidden blades on the science crew alone. He hardly had to think about it. A second wave of transport ships arrived: personnel haulers that looked ready to spill their air out into the vacuum if you spat on them, salvage trawlers already dismantling the shielding and superstructure of the station, supply ships boxing and packing the precious equipment and looting the pharmacies and food banks. By the time news of the assault reached Earth, the station would be stripped to a skeleton and its people hidden away in unlicensed prison cells throughout the Belt. Protogen would know sooner, of course. They had outposts much closer than the inner planets. There was a calculus of response time and possible gain. The mathematics of piracy and war. Miller knew it, but he didn’t let it worry him. Those were decisions for Fred and his attachés to make. Miller had taken more than enough initiative for one day. Posthuman. It was a word that came up in the media every five or six years, and it meant different things every time. Neural regrowth hormone? Posthuman. Sex robots with inbuilt pseudo intelligence? Posthuman. Self-optimizing network routing? Posthuman. It was a word from advertising copy, breathless and empty, and all he’d ever thought it really meant was that the people using it had a limited imagination about what exactly humans were capable of. Now, as he escorted a dozen captives in Protogen uniforms to a docked transport heading God-knew-where, the word was taking on new meaning. Are you even human anymore? All posthuman meant, literally speaking, was what you were when you weren’t
James S.A. Corey (Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1))
A tawdry realm of shifting, insecure employment and fleeting glimpses of high reward for little effort. A world where strings are pulled by complete cretins while those who work hard at the creative coalface are at the bottom of a steaming dunghill of vacuity, broken dreams, and empty promises.
Kevin Armstrong (Absolute Beginner: Memoirs of the world's best least-known guitarist)
Adolf Hitler had a favorite word, fanaticism, which was hardly ever omitted from any of his speeches, and he had put skilled psychologists and advertising men at work to make certain that the new generations of Germans would never know anything else.
Upton Sinclair (O Shepherd, Speak! (The Lanny Budd Novels #10))
How long does it take to Learn Freelancing? How long it takes to learn freelancing depends on what you're learning, how you start freelancing, and how hard you try to learn it. Learning something requires more willpower and concentration than any effort. The sooner you continue to learn to work with focus, the sooner you will succeed. And the slower you go, the longer it will take you to learn the task. So if you want to build a career online as a professional freelancer then you must spend extra time on it. Freelancing for Beginners: If you are new to the freelancing sector, there are a few things you need to know. For example: What is data entry? What is outsourcing? Web design key etc. Having a basic understanding of these things will make it much easier for you to learn freelancing. Although freelancing has complex tasks as well as some simple ones. But it is very few and low incomes. There are many new freelancers who want to earn freelancing with mobile. Their statement is, "I don't need so much money, only 4-5 thousand taka will do". In their case, I would say that you learn data entry work. You can earn that amount of money in this work. But if you choose freelancing just to do this job then I would say you are doing it wrong. Because this data entry work is very long, you need to work for 7-8 hours. And if you dream of only 4-5 thousand rupees by working 7-8 hours, then my suggestion for you is that you should not do this work but get tutoring. At least it will be best for you. Freelancing requires you to have big dreams and the passion to make them come true. Misconceptions about Freelancing: There is no substitute for a good quality computer or a good quality laptop to learn and master freelancing professionally. This way you can practice and learn very quickly without any hassle. Many people think that by looking at the monitor and pressing the keyboard, they become freelancing and can earn lakhs of rupees a month. In fact, those who think so cannot be entirely blamed. Many of us get lured by such mouthwatering advertisements as "opportunity to earn lakhs per month with just one month course" and waste both our precious time and money by joining bad unprofessional coaching centers. Why is it not possible to learn freelancing in just one month even in one year? It is clear proof that glittering does not make gold. There are thousands of jobs in freelancing, each job is different, and each job takes a different amount of time to learn. So it is very difficult to comment on how long it takes to learn freelancing. Be aware in choosing the right Freelancing Training Center: But whatever you do, don't go for an online course of Rs 400-600-1200. Because it will also lose the willpower you have to learn to freelance. If you have to do this type of bad course today, then do a government freelancing course or you can take practical training from an organization called "Bhairab ​​IT Zone" for a nominal fee. Here hands-on training is provided by professional freelancers using tools in free, premium, and upgraded versions. Although there are many ways or mediums to learn freelancing or outsourcing. E.g. Outsourcing Learning Books, Youtube Video Tutorials, Seminars etc. Either way, some learn to swim in a day and some in a week. To become a good swimmer one must continue swimming for a long time. Not everyone has the same brain capacity or stamina. Humans are naturally different from one another. The same goes for freelancing. You might learn the ins and outs of freelancing within 6-7 months, it might take another 1-2 years. No matter how long it takes to learn, you need to work twice as long to become proficient at it. But with hard work, willpower, and determination you can make any impossible possible. Please visit Our Blogging Website to Read More Articles related to Freelancing and Outsourcing.
Bhairab IT Zone
What do we advertise about You by how we serve? Do we reflect the belief shown in Jesus’ parable that You are a hard master taking what isn’t Yours? Forgive us for even brief lapses into such churlishness. Or, do we reflect a joy in serving that radiates from an intimate and time-tested knowledge of the goodness of the One we serve? Paul and Daniel were confident of this sovereign goodness even when they were prisoners rather than courtiers, and we can likewise tap into a joy that defies circumstances. When this happens, the oft-disappointed world will notice and investigate. 11/02/2010 blog
Brian Eshleman
Familiarity with the brand requires some experience of it (via advertising, word of mouth, internet publicity), Confidence comes with the perception of competence in the brand itself (which is why new brands really need to work hard for people to experience them first) and Trustworthiness refers to the sense of whether the brand is going to live up to its promise of reliability for the price paid.
David Amerland (The Tribe That Discovered Trust: How Trust Is Created Lost and Regained in Commercial Interactions)
Over the last generation, journalism has slowly been swallowed. The ascendant media companies of our era don’t think of themselves as heirs to a great ink-stained tradition. Some prefer to call themselves technology firms. This redefinition isn’t just a bit of fashionable branding. Silicon Valley has infiltrated the profession, from both within and without. Over the past decade, journalism has come to depend unhealthily on Facebook and Google. The big tech companies supply journalism with an enormous percentage of its audience—and therefore a big chunk of revenue. This gives Silicon Valley influence over the entire profession, and it has made the most of its power. Dependence generates desperation—a mad, shameless chase to gain clicks through Facebook, a relentless effort to game Google’s algorithms. It leads media to ink terrible deals, which look like self-preserving necessities, but really just allow Facebook and Google to hold them even tighter. Media will grant Facebook the right to sell advertising or give Google permission to publish articles directly on its fast-loading server. What makes these deals so terrible is the capriciousness of the tech companies. They like to shift quickly in a radically different direction, which is great for their bottom line, but terrible for all the media companies dependent on the platforms. Facebook will decide that its users prefer video to words, or that its users prefer ideologically pleasing propaganda to hard news. When Facebook shifts direction like this or when Google tweaks its algorithm, they instantly crash Web traffic flowing to media, with all the rippling revenue ramifications that follow. Media know they should flee the grasp of Facebook, but dependence also breeds cowardice. The prisoner lies on the cot dreaming of escape plans that will never hatch. Dependence on the big tech companies is increasingly the plight of the worker and the entrepreneur. Drivers maintain erratic patterns of sleep because of Uber’s shifting whims. Companies that manufacture tchotchkes sold on Amazon watch their businesses collapse when Amazon’s algorithms detect the profitability of their item, leading the giant to manufacture the goods itself at a lower price. The problem isn’t just financial vulnerability. It’s the way in which the tech companies dictate the patterns of work, the way in which their influence can shift the ethos of an entire profession to suit their needs—lowering standards of quality, eroding ethical protections. I saw this up close during my time at the New Republic. I watched how dependence on the tech companies undermined the very integrity of journalism. At the very beginning of that chapter in my career, I never imagined that we would go down that path.
Franklin Foer (World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech)
Draw a line in the sand As you get going, keep in mind why you’re doing what you’re doing. Great businesses have a point of view, not just a product or service. You have to believe in something. You need to have a backbone. You need to know what you’re willing to fight for. And then you need to show the world. A strong stand is how you attract superfans. They point to you and defend you. And they spread the word further, wider, and more passionately than any advertising could. Strong opinions aren’t free. You’ll turn some people off. They’ll accuse you of being arrogant and aloof. That’s life. For everyone who loves you, there will be others who hate you. If no one’s upset by what you’re saying, you’re probably not pushing hard enough. (And you’re probably boring, too.) Lots of people hate us because our products do less than the competition’s. They’re insulted when we refuse to include their pet feature. But we’re just as proud of what our products don’t do as we are of what they do. We design them to be simple because we believe most software is too complex: too many features, too many buttons, too much confusion. So we build software that’s the opposite of that. If what we make isn’t right for everyone, that’s OK. We’re willing to lose some customers if it means that others love our products intensely. That’s our line in the sand. When you don’t know what you believe, everything becomes an argument. Everything is debatable. But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious. For example, Whole Foods stands for selling the highest quality natural and organic products available. They don’t waste time deciding over and over again what’s appropriate. No one asks, “Should we sell this product that has artificial flavors?” There’s no debate. The answer is clear. That’s why you can’t buy a Coke or a Snickers there. This belief means the food is more expensive at Whole Foods. Some haters even call it Whole Paycheck and make fun of those who shop there. But so what? Whole Foods is doing pretty damn well. Another example is Vinnie’s Sub Shop, just down the street from our office in Chicago. They put this homemade basil oil on subs that’s just perfect. You better show up on time, though. Ask when they close and the woman behind the counter will respond, “We close when the bread runs out.” Really? “Yeah. We get our bread from the bakery down the street early in the morning, when it’s the freshest. Once we run out (usually around two or three p.m.), we close up shop. We could get more bread later in the day, but it’s not as good as the fresh-baked bread in the morning. There’s no point in selling a few more sandwiches if the bread isn’t good. A few bucks isn’t going to make up for selling food we can’t be proud of.” Wouldn’t you rather eat at a place like that instead of some generic sandwich chain?
Jason Fried (ReWork)
Many job seekers unwittingly choose the low-cost strategy when they should be pursuing a differentiation strategy. Instead of doing the hard work of differentiating themselves, they choose the easy path of low cost, effectively advertising themselves as commodities.
Anonymous
There are four common situations where you could build something people want, but still not end up with a viable business. First, you could build something people want, but for which you just can’t figure out a viable business model. The money isn’t adding up. For example, people won’t pay, and selling advertising won’t cover the bills. There is just no real market. Second, you could build something people want, but there are just not enough customers to reach profitability. It’s just too small a market, and there aren’t obvious ways to expand. This occurs often when startups aren’t ambitious enough and pick too narrow a niche. Third, you could build something people want, but reaching them is cost prohibitive. You find yourself in a hard-to-reach market. An example is a relatively inexpensive product that requires a direct sales force to sell it. That combo just doesn’t work. Finally, you could build something people want, but a lot of other companies build it too. In this situation you are in a hypercompetitive market where it is simply too hard to get customers.
Gabriel Weinberg (Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth)
Clinton got out there and created a new narrative on the economy, which took some of the needles out of Obama,” says Republican strategist Mike Murphy. “It was the biggest single number-moving event in the entire campaign. It was devastatingly important to the Obama guys. And he put him back in business.” (It also helped, Murphy adds, that “the Romney campaign was totally incompetent.”) In 2000, Clinton had famously faulted Al Gore for not letting Clinton rally the base in key swing states. It was not a mistake Barack Obama was going to repeat. In addition to his convention speech, Clinton stumped for Obama in swing states like Florida and Ohio. Unlike Gore and his campaign team, “the Obama people, despite whatever hard feelings they had, were pretty dispassionate and not afraid to let him come in and steal the show, if they thought it would be helpful,” says a former Clinton official who worked in the Obama administration. Clinton even starred in a widely seen advertisement for Obama, declaring that “President Obama has a plan to rebuild America from the ground up, investing in innovation, education, and job training. It only works if there is a strong middle class. That’s what happened when I was president.”15
Daniel Halper (Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine)
How can any of us even know what to believe anymore? Our culture’s full of so much phoniness and deception. Companies advertise products to make us believe that we will be more beautiful, more healthy, or live longer by consuming their products. We are seduced by lovers who feed their porn addictions when we’re asleep. We’re taught to believe that if we work hard and take risks, that we can achieve our dreams, yet youth unemployment is the highest it’s been in decades. Fairytales tell us that true love exists, but half of all marriages end in divorce.
Shannon Mullen (See What Flowers)
We have been conditioned by today's advertising to respond instantly to the word "housewife" with the word "drudgery". ... A creative Counterpart is more than just a helper. She is a woman who having chosen (or have found herself in) the vocation of wife and mother, decides to learn and grow in all the areas this role and to work as hard as if she were aiming for the presidency of corporation. Functioning as a professional in all areas of marriage is the essence of being a creative counterpart.
Linda Dillow (Creative Counterpart : Becoming the Woman, Wife, and Mother You Have Longed To Be)
The ancient Romans would call the Ironman’s brand appeal argumentum a fortiori, “argument from strength.” Its logic goes like this: if something works the hard way, it’s more likely to work the easy way. Advertisers favor the argument from strength. Years ago, Life cereal ran an ad with little Mikey the fussy eater. His two older brothers tested the cereal on him, figuring that if Mikey liked it, anybody would. And he liked it! An argumentum a fortiori cereal ad.
Jay Heinrichs (Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion)
The triumph of consumerism was made possible by the related actions of schools, advertising, and media. Mass-consumer culture integrates consumerism into all aspects of life from birth to death, including, but not limited to, education, leisure-time activities, the popular arts, the home, travel, and personal imagination. Mass-consumer culture captures the fantasy world of people with brand names and fashions that promise personal transformation, the vicarious thrill of imagining the glamorous lives of media celebrities, and the promise of escape from hard work through packaged travel and cruises to an envisioned paradise.
Joel Spring (American Education (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education))
Indeed, probably the most effective way to break the free market's spell would be to transform its most debilitating cultural products into a globalized twelve-step program. See, for instance, how New Economy laissez-faire ideologues like Virginia Postrel or Chris Anderson fare in the hypercapitalist but viciously authoritarian island paradise of Singapore. Or put Thomas Friedman to work in a Marianas textile factory for a couple of months and let him see how flat the market-mastered world looks to him then. Take the utopian theorists of "seasteading" libertarianism at their word, and let them fashion their stateless free-market utopia out of all reach of all international sea treaty enforcement. Put Steve Forbes to work as a union organizer in the shadows of the breathtaking architectural homage to investor-class excess known as the Abu Dhabi skyline - where the local construction industry is awash in sweated day labor. Indeed, I can see a whole Survivor-style reality television franchise in the offing: Capitalist Detox Island. True, it might be hard to sell to advertisers - unless, that is, you compel TARP recipients to purchase ad time. Now that's a manipulation of market forces I can get behind.
Chris Lehmann
Indeed, probably the most effective way to break the free market's spell would be to transform its most debilitating cultural products into a globalized twelve-step program. See, for instance, how New Economy laissez-faire ideologues like Virginia Postrel or Chris Anderson fare in the hypercapitalist but viciously authoritarian island paradise of Singapore. Or put Thomas Friedman to work in a Marianas textile factory for a couple of months and let him see how flat the market-mastered world looks to him then. Take the utopian theorists of "seasteading" libertarianism at their word, and let them fashion their stateless free-market utopia out of all reach of all international sea treaty enforcement. Put Steve Forbes to work as a union organizer in the shadows of the breathtaking architectural homage to investor-class excess known as the Abu Dhabi skyline - where the local construction industry is awash in sweated day labor. Indeed, I can see a whole Survivor-style reality television franchise in the offing: Capitalist Detox Island. True, it might be hard to sell to advertisers - unless, that is, you compel TARP recipients to purchase ad time. Now that's a manipulation of market forces I can get behind.
Chris Lehmann (Rich People Things)
More to the point for US intelligence, while it took the Dutch Safety Board more than a year to reach its conclusions, we had the Russians dead to rights in just a few hours, fusing data from our so-called “national technical means satellites,” intercepts, and open-source reporting—particularly social media. For me, our ability to pinpoint attribution for this tragedy to an overly aggressive and trigger-happy Russian military was particularly gratifying, because I’d lived through the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983. This time we had systems in place that were designed to collect the relevant information, systems that would allow us to show precisely what happened. Not only did those systems work as advertised, but we also had the means in place to integrate data
James R. Clapper (Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence)
A few intermittent pounds were hardly enough, however, and – reluctantly – the comrades soon found themselves looking for jobs. It was the first and last time Eno would be driven to this unconscionable extreme. Eschewing his more outrageous garments and armed with his diploma, he wandered into the Camberwell Labour Exchange in the late summer and found himself a placement as an assistant paste-up artist with a local advertising free-sheet called the South Londoner. As he confessed to Lester Bangs, Eno took to the work surprisingly easily: ‘I didn’t hate it. I became very successful at it. I started off at the bottom, doing a very menial job, and in the four months I was there I got promoted again and again and again, and I ended up earning four or five times as much as I’d started with, and sort of running the office. And then I realized that I could carry on doing that and never do anything else, because I wasn’t doing anything else.’ The ‘anything else’ Eno was failing to do was music: ‘I kept saying to myself, “Oh well, I’ll do some music this weekend”, and then I wouldn’t, I’d be too tired and I’d say, “Oh, I’ll do it next weekend”, and then I wouldn’t do it, so I just gave it up after a while. It was exactly what I knew a job would be like – not horrible enough to make you want to get out, just well paying enough to make you comfortable and to keep putting things off.
David Sheppard (On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno)