The Entrepreneur's Guide to Getting Your Shit Together

Table of Contents

"The business world isn't run by geniuses. It's a slapdash circus of good-hearted idiots, snarling sociopaths, dedicated loonies, and the occaisionally brilliant risk-taker" page 9

"As a species, we tend to avoid partnering up with people who freak out too easily. They're a burden, especially when the chips are down." page 62

"Most of the world-class salesmen I studied under were educated in "the street." They learned to predict and influence people's behavior because they otherwise wouldn't eat. Their income was directly proportionate to how well they understood human motivation and desire...

Compare this with the "other side" of the advertising world. Most of the executives and creatives at the big-shot ad agencies I worked with were entranced with what they believed was the "science" part of psychology.

And they did entrepreneurs a huge favor by making "focus groups" and "data sampling" a key factor of their research to discover what people wanted.

Why was this a big favor to us? Because... as it slowly dawned on them that their endless focus groups *weren't working*... a whole separate branch of pop psychology emerged (funded by agencies) to explain what happened in the focus groups that made them so unreliable" page 70-71

"If math were a human event, 2 plus 2 would equal 4 today, 5 tomorrow, and equal a banana next week. Humans aren't just unpredictable -- they frequently are completely irrational." page 72

"The boomers are now *pouring* bucks into the economy, still spending like there's no tomorrow... and yet the ad agencies remain stuck in the "must have youth" mindset. The average ad agency account rep is twenty-eight. And she is considered an "expert" at what the market wants." page 76