825 Inspirational Business Consultant Quotes (2023)
1. “Success is the child of audacity”
2. “Tough times never last, but tough people do.”
3. “Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work.”
4. “[Predictable Profits] is the most insightful business coach I’ve worked with since Brian Tracy quadrupled my income 15 years ago. I’ve been a marketer for over 20 years, yet he sees what I’m doing from a very different — and profitable — perspective. His probing questions and accountability more than paid for his services. He’s outstanding!”
5. “Good follow-up alone elevates you above 95 percent of your peers. The follow-up is the hammer and nails of your networking tool kit. In fact, FOLLOW-UP IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS IN ANY FIELD.”
6. “Out there in some garage is an entrepreneur who’s forging a bullet with your company’s name on it.”
7. When you are under pressure as a consultant to achieve short term financial results, cutting out time for marketing and business development with a long term perspective is not an easy thing to consequently continue. But if you don't focus on it, it’ll kill your growth in the long run, no doubt!
8. “I like to tell people that all of our products and business will go through three phases. There’s vision, patience, and execution.”
9. “I can make more generals, but horses cost money.”
10. “You have a customer, they have a clear and defined problem. Speak to that pain, tell them how you can solve that pain and conversions will increase. If your targeting on your advertising is correct, it will work.”
11. “Realism is just another name for yesterday’s thinking.”
12. “By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.”
13. “The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.”
14. “Like organic entities, projects have life cycles. From a slow beginning they progress to a buildup of size, then peak, begin a decline, and finally must be terminated. (Also, like other organic entities, they often resist termination.) “
15. “Teaming – No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra.”
16. “A finely tuned marketing and publicity system delivers a predictable number of quality sales leads to you every day, month in and month out, so your salespeople spend time only with people who already understand what you do and who have proactively asked you to help them solve their problem. Find their sore spot, and bang it with a hammer.”
17. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most
18. “In order to succeed. We must first believe that we can.”
19. Write down details of both parties
20. “You can’t blame the pen or the paper if you write a lousy essay, right?”
21. “If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, it’s too large.”
22. “We each have all the time there is; our mental and moral status is determined by what we do with it.”
23. “A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.”
24. “You are everywhere, but you don’t have to be. Strategy is a decision to take a path, to say no.”
25. “You can celebrate accomplishments, but after a while, you need to start
26. I came from an environment where if you see a snake, you kill it. At General motors, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is to hire a consultant on snakes. - Author: Ross Perot
27. “This feeling, finally, that we may change things – this is at the centre of everything we are. Lose that… lose everything”
28. “Look for the positive qualities in your client’s negative behavior.”
29. “Setting Goal is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”
30. “My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.”
31. “Look for the positive qualities in your client's negative behavior.”
32. “Since nobody's perfect, we need resistance to test our ideas.”
33. Your consulting expertise is probably not truly exceptional but YOU certainly are. Be yourself. It’s really that simple!
34. “Knowledge is power, wisdom is bliss and information is useful for those of us who possess little of the first two.”
35. “When I first started talking about running for office, a lot of people said to me, ‘Don’t let the consultants change you,’ and I’d always assured them that I wouldn’t allow it to happen. But like it or not, I had to change. Not because of a consultant, but because I started to understand the cost of a stupid mistake.”
36. “Greatness is won, not awarded.”
37. I’ve seen many consultants fear to say ‘No’ to ill-suited opportunities in order to please a client (and/or earn an income/revenue), compromising their market credibility and ultimately seriously compromising their future consulting growth.
38. “If you’re too busy to learn, you won’t be busy for very long.”
39. “If the game is designed for you to lose, don’t play that game. Play a different one.”
40. “No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you’ll see
41. “If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention.”
42. “Vision without execution is a hallucination.”
43. “Reconnaissance memoranda should always be written in the simplest style and be purely descriptive. They should never stray from their objective by introducing extraneous ideas.”
44. “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”
45. “Working with [our coach] at Predicable Profits was refreshing and insightful. [Our coach] helped us focus on crucial issues our business needed to remedy. What I appreciated most was his background in marketing and our work together on executing concrete actions.
46. “Worry-free contracts and invoices”
47. “Without
48. “I think that’s why I embrace being a salesperson and recognize that it is about helping people. It’s a gift to the other people to exchange energy and help someone get to where they’re going. My mentor says that sales isn’t something that you do to someone, sales is something that you do for someone.”
49. “Ensure your documentation is short and sharp and make much more use of people-to-people communication. ”
50. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”
51. “After two weeks of working on a project, you know whether it will work or not.”
52. “Fight fair, but avoid fair fights.”
53. “You will be remembered in the long haul for the quality of your work, not the quantity of your work … no one evaluates Picasso based on the number of paintings he churned out.”
54. “Before anything can be repeatable or reusable, it must be usable.”
55. “Business is all about relationships, how well you build them determines how well they build your business.”
56. “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what
57. “Delivering a project isn’t difficult. What’s difficult is delivering a project without first taking the time to plan properly”
58. My core content has always been based on my experiences in the trenches of consulting: case studies, lessons learned, how-to articles, interviews with key stakeholders/clients, etc. I did the writing myself and outsourced the publishing and social sharing tasks.
59. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
60. In order to better connect with your clients (both off- and online), you have to niche down and demonstrate that you’re an expert in a single, narrow area.
61. “This feeling, finally, that we may change things – this is at the centre of everything we are. Lose that… lose everything. “
62. In a world full of opportunity, we need to overcome our deep-rooted need to respond to everything.
63. “Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.”
64. Many consultants struggle to translate their expertise into an easy-to-understand, credible message.
65. “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
66. “Reengineering cannot be entrusted to the semi-competent, the hangers-on with
67. “Customers may forget what you said but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.”
68. Narrow down microscopically to grow your authority (and your consulting business). This seems like a huge contradiction for many consultants.
69. I am always surprised by how many consultants claim to be an expert but consciously avoid publicly declaring that – the ultimate 'narrow down acid test' – on their website or profile page.
70. “Without caring there can be no quality.”
71. “Know what your customer want most and what your company does best. Focus on where those two meet.”
72. At least 95% of the consultants I work with, know that saying yes to everything (basically selling time for money) is not the best way to become proud of their work, and it’s burning them out in the long run.
73. “No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did he would cease to be an artist.”
74. “Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”
75. “Some of the most flowery praise you hear on the subject of teams is only hypocrisy. Managers learn to talk a good game about teams even when they’re secretly threatened by the whole concept.”
76. “We always overestimate the cost of doing the right thing and always underestimate the ultimate cost of doing the wrong thing.”
77. “When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.”
78. “A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.”
79. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
80. “Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
81. “When a risk occurs, with some ingenuity, this may open up an opportunity, and conversely when pursuing an opportunity there will be associated risks. Risks are generally deemed acceptable if the possible gains exceed the possible losses. “
82. “In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.”
83. “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
84. “There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop”
85. “If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing.”
86. “Being a Project Manager is like being an artist, you have the different colored process streams combining into a work of art”
87. “Luck is what happens
88. “A well-constructed project management workshop should give people a solid foundation to build on.”
89. As a consultant, you will only appear in Google’s top hits if Google considers you to be relevant.
90. “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.”
91. “Rewards and motivation are an oil change for project engines. Do it regularly and often.”
92. “It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.”
93. This economics-related article is a stub. You can help Wikiquote by expanding it.
94. “People who ask no questions make no discoveries.”
95. “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be
96. “Failures are divided into two classes – those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.”
97. “Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.”
98. “Dialogue is the basic unit of work in an organisation. The quality of the dialogue determines how people gather and process information, how they make decisions, and how they feel about one another and about the outcome of these decisions. Dialogue can lead to new ideas and speed as a competitive advantage.”
99. “If you can dream it, you can do it.”
100. “The best presenters have conversations with their audiences.”
101. “As technology makes it easier for a business to find and collaborate with outside expertise, a huge and competitive market for consultants will arise.”
102. “’Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.”
103. “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”
104. “Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.”
105. “Consultant: any ordinary guy more than fifty miles from home.”
106. “Calling yourself a professional no more makes you a professional than sitting in your garage makes you a car.”
107. “Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.”
108. “As Consultants, we add immense value. With our insights, we are able to give quality guidance to companies, businesses, governments, organizations, municipalities, groups and individuals - and ultimately provide them with resources to help them make better choices. And with everyone making better choices, the world is a better place.”
109. “To win without risk is to triumph without glory.”
110. “You must not only aim right but draw the bow with all your might.”
111. “The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.”
112. “No matter how good the team or how efficient the methodology, if we’re not solving the right problem, the project fails “
113. “The functional groups should not be allowed to stretch out the project for the sake of improvement, refinement, or the investigation of the most remote potential risk.”
114. “Goals are dreams with deadlines.”
115. “I suppose that I was a kind of consultant for taste. Is it good taste? Or bad taste? I had an attention to detail, to what would tell best the story. Because many people get excited about the work and drift off from the story.”
116. “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”
117. “When you compete with a person, you only have to be as good or better than the person to win. If you compete with yourself, there is no limitation to how good you can be.”
118. Today, I am obsessed with 'pattern seeking' as the backbone of my expertise and I spent a substantial amount of time with my current clients to help them with understanding this critical component of authority progress.
119. “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”
120. “The only muscle that you’ve got is in between your ears.”
121. “High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.”
122. “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”
123. “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes … but no plans.”
124. “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less”
125. How the heck can you ever be a credible expert if you are piggy-backing on all sorts of expertise domains? When a consultant covers multiple domains, it’s impossible to establish himself as an expert in any of them.
126. “Consultants start with the hourly rate, but at some point, you’re going to do a breadth of projects enough where you’re going to extract some method to the madness. It’s that method that I think most consultancies stop. They never codify the methodology. They never codify it in a way that can be bought differently. Until you make that transition from hours to that process or structured work products, which is hard, you’re never going to get paid fairly for that. When you make the transition to the work product, it implies that you’ve seen enough engagements that work product will be applicable across those engagements.”
127. “The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios… The idea that you can actually predict what’s going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.”
128. As a consultant, you need to fully grasp the details, the background, the context, the relationships, the characteristics, the frequency, the volume, the typical stakeholders involved, etc. of the critical pains of your target clients (in your narrow market). If you cover multiple expertise areas, that’s totally impossible to accomplish.
129. “When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective code.”
130. “Why do so many professionals say they are project managing, when what they are actually doing is fire fighting?”
131. “Any secured leader is comfortable consulting professionals in their areas of expertise, this demonstrates the strength and not weakness”
132. “If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.”
133. “Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.”
134. “Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it were. Be candid with everyone. Don’t manage, lead. Change before you have to. If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete. Control your own destiny, or someone else will.”
135. “It is only when the tide goes out that you see who was swimming without shorts.”
136. “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”
137. “If all you have is a hammer in the toolbox, everything looks like a nail.”
138. “Any Idiot can point out a problem …. A leader is willing to do something about it! Leaders Solve problems!”
139. “Mistakes are the portals of discovery.”
140. “If I had nine hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first six sharpening my
141. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to
142. “Plan for what it is difficult while it is easy, Do what is great while it is small.”
143. “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”
144. In my early consulting years, I (also) struggled to say ‘No’ because it felt like surrender. Every new opportunity felt like an attractive business challenge I needed to crush.
145. “Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”
146. “That wasn’t flying. That was falling with style.”
147. If you want to be serious about growing your consulting business and starting to attract your ideal clients in a more consistent and predictable way, you will have to get comfortable with online marketing.
148. I think sometimes when you love something too much, you're that much more aware of how much you have to lose - Author: Karina Halle
149. “Executives owe it to the organisation and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.”
150. “The man who has confidence in himself gains the confidence of others.”
151. “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible,
152. In a world where buyers of consultancy services expect an ‘easy to find’, Amazon-like 5-star rated expert profile, how are you going to climb to the top of those search results?
153. “In the business world, there is no gray. Either you are black, or you are white-washed.”
154. “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
155. “I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.”
156. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
157. “The biggest mistake a small business can make is to think like a small business.”
158. “Watch, listen, and learn. You can’t know it all yourself … anyone who thinks they do is destined for mediocrity.”
159. “There’s no luck in business. There’s only drive, determination and more drive.”
160. “There are three types of company today: Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what has happened.”
161. “There are no working hours for leaders.”
162. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
163. “We have that illusion that we are ‘deciding’ what to make a character do, in order to ‘convey our message’ or something like that. But, at least in my experience, you are often more like a river-rafting guide who’s been paid a bonus to purposely steer your clients into the roughest possible water.”
164. “There is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”
165. “Running a project without a WBS is like going to a strange land without a roadmap.”
166. “Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.”
167. The ugliest player I ever signed was Kenny Burns. - Author: Brian Clough
168. “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them
169. “He can who thinks he can, and he can’t who thinks he can’t. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.”
170. “Good strategy works by focusing energy and resources on one, or a very few, pivotal objectives whose accomplishment will lead to a cascade of favorable outcomes.”
171. “Judge a man by his questions, not by his answers.”
172. “Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can. “
173. “I am not interested in…making sure that you (the employee) are here, that you are giving us so many hours a day. We need people who will deliver a final result. “
174. “Let the tech firms and consulting firms build your skills, but be sure to ask yourself, ‘Am I maximizing my impact?’ ‘Am I living up to my values?’”
175. “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
176. “Measure twice, cut once.”
177. “With ISO 9000 you can still have terrible processes and products. You can certify a manufacturer that makes life jackets out of concrete…”
178. I would say some of the food I talk about that I really enjoy, like cake and bacon, I eat a lot less than I portray in my act. But that stuff that I dislike, it's pretty sincere. - Author: Jim Gaffigan
179. “Satisfaction is a rating. Loyalty is a brand.”
180. A consultant: someone brought in to build a one-handled wheelbarrow. - Author: Fennel Hudson
181. “Why do anything unless it is going to be great?”
182. Consulting IS marketing: marketing is not separate from you, as a consultant. A good consultant is a good marketer of his or her expertise.
183. “Don’t think there are no crocodiles just because the water is calm.”
184. “Projects progress quickly until they become 90% complete; then remain at 90% complete forever. “
185. “The only thing certain about any negotiation is that it will lead to another negotiation .”
186. “The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake. “
187. “A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person’s brow.”
188. “No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
189. “As has been taught to teachers of the Harvard Business School, the art of asking good questions is often the most important element of managerial tasks. ”
190. “Wherever I was in the world, at the beginning of every consulting project, one thing was certain: I would know less about the business at hand than the people I was supposed to be advising.”
191. “Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.”
192. “Reengineering cannot be entrusted to the semi-competent, the hangers-on with nothing better to do. “
193. “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
194. “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”
195. “I stayed in the astronaut program until 1993. People ask me why I left. I thought I had a lot of things to contribute that would be difficult to do if I stayed. I thought I could have a stronger voice as an advocate for space exploration. So I ended up starting my own technology consulting company.”
196. “I am a huge believer that every moment in life has a meaning and a purpose, so long as you keep your mind open to the possibilities.
197. “Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances”
198. “Every now and then when you’re on stage, you can hear the best sound that a player can hear. It is a sound you can’t get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you’ve hit them where they live.”
199. “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
200. “Increasingly, mass marketing is turning into a mass of niches.”
201. “The heart and soul of a company is creativity and innovation.”
202. “Some people say they have 20 years experience, when in reality, they have 1 year's experience repeated 20 times. (Stephen M R Covey to Richie Norton when Norton asked if he was too young to train older executives for Covey.)”
203. “Unengaged sponsor sinks the ship.”
204. “Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they’ll come back. We have to be great every time or we’ll lose them.”
205. “When Tom Ford asked me to consult for Gucci, I had never consulted in my life. I didn’t know what consulting was, and look, we made something amazing.”
206. “When cities prioritize sustainability, the residents in that city are more inclined to embrace sustainability as well.”
207. “People get into a rhythm that makes them resistant to change. To understand the mind-set, try switching hands when you brush your teeth in the morning.”
208. “Customer don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.”
209. “A manager is not a person who can do the work better than his men; he is a person who can get his men to do the work better than he can.”
210. “Never stop until your good becomes better, and your better becomes the best.”
211. “Without customers, you don’t have a business. You have a hobby.”
212. “Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.”
213. “Information technology departments must spend enormous amounts of time and money worrying about integrating big computer systems with billions of pieces of customer data.”
214. “The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.”
215. “The only way to permanently change the temperature in the room is to reset the thermostat. In the same way, the only way to change your level of financial success ‘permanently’ is to reset your financial thermostat. But it is your choice whether you choose to change.”
216. “In today's constantly evolving economy, business models cannot be static. The business model of each business must be consistently changing and evolving in order to stay relevant and to succeed.”
217. “Hands down, the top rated business coach out there! I’ve had the pleasure of working with [Predictable Profits] for the past year and I can’t thank him enough for the knowledge and impact his strategies and coaching style has done for our business.”
218. “Never underestimate your power to change yourself and never overestimate your power to change others.”
219. “You can’t keep it all in your head. Project control tools are an absolute necessity for the control of large projects. “
220. “If you want more people responding to your marketing, you need [Predictable Profits]. It’s really that simple. He’s been instrumental in crafting our messaging, building our brand identity, developing sales strategies, preparing for a course launch, as well as helping us implement marketing strategies that drive engagement and attract buyers. With [Predictable Profits], we make smarter decisions and see success faster, while also avoiding costly mistakes. Lastly, I know [Predictable Profits] will handle my project as if it was his own — he’s one of the few who actually care and aren’t just motivated by money. I highly recommend [Predictable Profits] to any and everyone looking to scale their business!”
221. “Uncertainty will always be part of the taking charge process.”
222. “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done
223. Reframing your head from ‘selling’ to ‘helping’ gives you a better mental guiding principle. Not only does this result in better content, but it also makes it easier for most consultants to embrace the marketing aspect in consulting.
224. “A {specification, design, procedure, test plan} that will not fit on one page cannot be understood.”
225. “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t – you’re right.”
226. “If your business is not on the internet then your business will be out of business.”
227. “If it ain’t broke, break it (or someone else will break it for you).”
228. “Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening.”
229. “I upped my rates and won more clients”
230. “Operations keeps the lights on, strategy provides a light at the end of the tunnel, but project management is the train engine that moves the organization forward.”
231. “Every company’s greatest assets are its customers because without customers there is no company.”
232. “Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for
233. “Project proposals, business cases or cost benefit analyses are probably being massaged (either by underestimating costs or timeframes or by being very optimistic about the benefits) so projects will be approved. ”
234. “People get into a rhythm that makes them resistant to change. To understand
235. I've got my own studio, so I sit in my studio writing and if I get a great take, that's the take. - Author: Kid Rock
236. “The P in PM is as much about ‘people management’ as it is about ‘project management’. “
237. “The fact is great relationships are based on great conversations, not one person showing the other how smart they are. I like to say experts tell advisors to ask great questions and listen. Experts sell — advisors create a buyer who’s enthusiastic about what you have to offer. Experts build professional credibility, not bad. Advisors build deep personal trust.”
238. “I always believe it’s better to have 30 imaginations working on a project, rather than one imagination telling the other 29 what to do.”
239. “Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person – not just an employee – are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.”
240. “I cannot rejoice enough in your suffering because of your stupidity and cowardice”
241. “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as
242. “It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.”
243. “If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected .”
244. “The only thing certain about any negotiation is that it will lead to another
245. “Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.”
246. “Too many are concerned with avoiding sinking the boat, when they should be concerned about missing it.”
247. “Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal .”
248. “The fastest way to succeed? Look like you’re playing by someone else’s rules while quietly playing by your own.”
249. “Great things are done by devotion to one idea.”
250. “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work “
251. “Consultants often deal with questions about their authority. If a prospective client doesn’t have full trust in you, they will find it very difficult to engage you. In fact, this is one of the key reasons sales cycles can take so long. If the client is not convinced that you’re clearly the best option, they will put off making a purchase. In this situation, you need to do all you can to educate and provide value to your prospective client to prove to them that you are an authority, that you get results, and that they can trust you”
252. “A low budget is uncomfortable.”
253. Content-driven visibility is the only thing that is going to make you stand out in a crowded and very competitive consulting world. Now even more than before! The more you open up, the more your clients and prospects can relate to you as a consultant.
254. If you keep saying ‘Yes’ to everything because you’re either scared of losing opportunities or you just want to be nice to your existing clients, you’ll never have time to structurally grow your business.
255. “I keep six honest serving men
256. “On planning – What is truth today may be falsehood tomorrow. Never confuse your plan with truth.”
257. “What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.”
258. It’s my deepest conviction that if you don’t install efficient, repeatable, and consistent marketing systems, you’ll get swept away by the many other consultants and consultancies who are starting to master online marketing.
259. “Successful organizations make habits of things others don’t like to do, or
260. “The customers should be happy, but the business should not accept mediocre profits just to make the customers happy. The relationship between business and customer should be reciprocal.
261. “Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.”
262. I am convinced that commoditization of consultancy is already happening at high speed and will put us all at risk if we remain afraid of specializing (thus, afraid of saying ‘No’ to ill-suited opportunities).
263. How are you going to raise your game to become more relevant for Google? Answer: by consistently producing high-value content about your work, your approach, your deep expertise, your case studies (successes and failures), your research findings, etc.
264. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
265. “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”
266. “Seed hope.”
267. “The only certain thing about a forecast is that it will be wrong.”
268. In fact, Google is constantly encouraging consultants to get more and more specialized and does this by emphasizing the importance of Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness in its E.A.T. search algorithm.
269. “If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.”
270. “My philosophy is, don’t take no for an answer and be willing to sacrifice your entire project for freedom. “
271. “People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything. “
272. “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”
273. “The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.”
274. “You do not lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not
275. “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.”
276. A growing number of consultants have started investing more time to become visible authorities to become more relevant for our new boss, Google. You better get ready for this storm!
277. “Each completed task establishes certain parameters and imposes constraints on the next task. “
278. “Everything starts with the customer.”
279. “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.”
280. “It isn’t uncommon for managers at senior levels of large organizations to be so out of touch with customer or production reality that they don’t know just how broken some of their business processes are.”
281. Eat, sleep & Breathe your business to ensure it's success - Author: Paul Cookson
282. “The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.”
283. “As a consultant, a new client will tell you what they want...your job is to deliver what they need.”
284. The biggest authorities in the world relentlessly say ‘No’ in order to protect and maintain their narrow positioning.
285. “You never achieve real success unless you like what you are doing.”
286. “The first problem for us all, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.”
287. “If you think safety is expensive, try an accident.”
288. “A common warning sign is denial of the problem itself.”
289. “New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other
290. As consultants, we need to be ruthless in discerning what is important and what is just noise.
291. “By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day. “
292. Most consultants don’t really understand that saying ‘No’ is the biggest force for building their business. Instead of striving for variety (consultants love the variety!), focus on building the deep and unique competence that clients are looking for and are prepared to pay a premium for.
293. “Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.”
294. “A consultant is someone who saves his client almost enough to pay his fee. “
295. “Small opportunities are often beginning of great achievements.”
296. “Your Customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
297. “Estimating is what you do when you don’t know. “
298. “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
299. My future content will be based on ‘key pain points’ of my current/potential clients and will be written to help them solve specific challenges in becoming visible authorities in their domain.
300. “Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature’s inexorable imperative.”
301. “The conclusion is simple: if a 200-man project has 25 managers who are the most competent and experienced programmers, fire the 175 troops and put the managers back to programming.”
302. Most consultants don’t really understand that saying ‘No’ is the biggest force for building their business.
303. “Don’t find fault. Find a remedy.”
304. “The average executive receives 120 emails a day. They’re busy and they are in the mode of skimming and ignoring or deleting anything that looks like selling or marketing and anything from people that they don’t know where there’s nothing in it for them to open the email. What we need to do is to get back on the phone and we need to have the right conversations.”
305. “There’s something inherently funny about self-reference.”
306. “Self-trust is the first secret of success.”
307. “The minute you’re satisfied with where you are, you aren’t there anymore.”
308. “The affairs of life embrace a multitude of interests, and he who reasons in any one of them, without consulting the rest, is a visionary unsuited to control the business of the world.”
309. “People are the gatekeepers of change.”
310. “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything.”
311. “Project managers function as bandleaders who pull together their players each a specialist with individual score and internal rhythm. Under the leader’s direction, they all respond to the same beat.”
312. “Great customer service!”
313. “When cost is number one in importance, you’ve already lost.”
314. Philanthropy Advantage provides the best nonprofit business consulting in Kansas city, USA. As a leading Microsoft Dynamic CRM consultant in the Kansas city, we are specialized in providing high end MS CRM solutions for Nonprofit and foundations. - Author: Matthew Walker
315. “Focus is about saying no.”
316. “A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”
317. “Business is a combination of war and sport.”
318. “Always give your best effort even when the odds are against you.”
319. President
320. “The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.”
321. Running a business without marketing will kill it - Author: Paul Cookson
322. “Most consultants are not getting thousands of sales leads. They don’t have 1,000 people a month filling out a box on their website saying, “Give me your eBook.” They might, but usually, consultants are dealing with a universe of dozens or at most, hundreds of people and probably 3 or 5, or 10 or 20 existing or past clients. The espresso machine is about making 50% more two times, maybe even three times more money from an existing client list. If you do any paid advertising or marketing, it gives you more ability to go get more customers as well. This is true. It’s almost like a lot of physics. It’s true at Starbucks. It’s true at a grocery store. It’s true in a consulting business.”
323. “They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them
324. “My job is to help my clients ask better questions. My mentor taught me, `Ask a better question, get a better answer.”
325. “Effective consulting is about gathering and presenting actionable data, and helping businesses solve problems, implement solutions, and innovate.”
326. “The word ‘Genius’ isn’t applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman
327. “There are two types of people in the world, those who say ‘there are two types
328. “A conceptual framework is a ‘frame that works’ to put those concepts in practice.”
329. “You cannot earn $10 million. Nobody earns millions. You can rob, you can steal, or you can make $10 million in an IPO, but never earn so much. So just forget all this saving and consulting bullshit.”
330. “Individuals and organizations that are good react quickly to change. Individuals and organizations that are great create change.”
331. “If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn’t thinking.”
332. “If you have never recommended canceling a project, you haven’t been an effective project manager.”
333. I teach consultants to deepen their authority 'by staying upstream' as much as possible: packaging their expertise into 'a strategic system' and to price it as a premium diagnostic service — upstream being strategic versus downstream being operational/implementation support.
334. “You can’t improve anything if you can’t define it.”
335. “Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.”
336. “Requirements – In many cases, the software is much less important than the data delivered.”
337. “Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you will do. Attitude determines how well you do it.”
338. “I’m a creative consultant, whatever that means.”
339. “The core of the consulting business is going in and essentially making yourself indispensible by eating the brain of the organization, meaning that the consultants go in and assume key functions in the organization.”
340. “Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others’ success, and then standing back and letting them shine.”
341. “The project manager is expected to integrate all aspects of the project, ensure that the proper knowledge and resources are available when and where needed, and above all, ensure that the expected results are produced in a timely, cost- effective manner.”
342. “Every technology has to pass the system integration test before it can achieve widespread market success. Pre existing systems must be either penetrated, replaced, or changed to allow for the new technology to achieve widespread market success.”
343. “Don’t do anything you don’t have to do. “
344. “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”
345. “Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything. “
346. “The only thing worse than starting something and failing … is not starting something.”
347. “When prosperity comes, do not use all of it.”
348. “Be candid with everyone. “
349. “What is the difference between coaching, consulting, and training?
350. “Some things are better done than described. “
351. “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.”
352. “It doesn’t work to leap a twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps.”
353. “Great things in business are never done by one person.”
354. “A leader is a person you will follow to a place you wouldn’t go by yourself.”
355. “You can’t be successful in business without taking risks. It’s really that simple.”
356. Know your ‘what’ and ‘why’
357. Instead of striving for variety (consultants love the variety!), focus on building the deep and unique competence that clients are looking for and are prepared to pay a premium for.
358. “If you’re feeling stuck in the mud with any of your sales or marketing efforts, Charlie Gaudet with Predictable Profits has proven himself as a strategic partner to us here at ConsultWebs. Charlie is intentional. He’s methodical with the strategies and ideas he lays out. I’ve found him to be very thought-provoking. He challenges ideas and brings those ideas to a greater level. In fact, in that process, brings everyone up to a greater level.
359. No whispered rumours which the many spread can wholly perish. - Author: Hesiod
360. “That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.”
361. “The customer is a rear-view mirror, not a guide to the future.”
362. “People of my generation, seeking to understand why companies succeed, have spent most of their time hunting an elusive animal called the SCA, or, to give its full name, the sustainable competitive advantage. They’ve hunted it in the belief it was the embodiment of success; a guarantee, if not of corporate immortality, at least, of a long, healthy, and prosperous business life. But they never found the creature. Or, if they found it, they never caught it. It seems the SCA, once found, becomes sand, running through fingers. There is some evidence of the animal’s previous existence in the Great Museum of Corporate Profitability. The IBM exhibit, for instance, shows the company could do no wrong – for a long period. The AT&T exhibit, the DuPont exhibit, and the Siemens exhibit all suggest these firms domesticated the SCA – for a while. Maybe the SCA is like the Great Awk. It might have existed once, but it became extinct so long ago that no one really knows for sure… I hesitate to say it, but I’m beginning to believe strategic agility is more important than strategy – that a firm’s ability to make money has more to do with its ability to transform itself, continuously, than whether it has the right strategy.”
363. “The things we fear most in organizations – fluctuations, disturbances,
364. “Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.”
365. If you don’t invest a substantial amount of time in positioning yourself as a visible authority NOW, then in 3-5 years, nobody will come across your expertise on the internet.
366. “The higher you go in a company, the less oxygen there is, so supporting
367. “To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.”
368. “When you settle for “vanilla” objectives such as “increased clarity,” or “more confidence,” or “higher commitment” (which I call “human resources objectives” because they are so weak and nonmeasurable), you deny yourself the opportunity to create dynamic ROI, where the client receives huge benefit and your equitable compensation is quite reasonable in light of that improvement.”
369. If consultants don’t do structured client pain validation on a permanent basis, I consider them as ghost riders, at risk of becoming irrelevant.
370. “You don’t build a business. You build people and people build the business.”
371. “Blaming someone else will only put the solution further out of reach.”
372. “I find that the harder I work the more luck I seem to have.”
373. “If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.”
374. “Since working with Predictable Profits, we’ve experienced the best back-to-back months in over a year. Thank you!”
375. “Never give up. Great things take time.”
376. “The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”
377. “Performance = potential minus interference.”
378. “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”
379. “New frameworks are like climbing a mountain – the larger view encompasses rather than rejects the more restricted view.”
380. “All you have in business is your reputation – So it’s very important that you keep your work.”
381. I've experienced first hand that many consultants are struggling to translate their (technical) expertise in a message that is easily understandable to their target audience.
382. “First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination. “
383. “If your business is serious about becoming the best version of itself, consult with Mayflower-Plymouth. If the company or government you lead has major problems that need major solutions or major opportunities that inspire action, consult with Mayflower-Plymouth. We provide holistic solutions with our consulting services.”
384. “Everything is streamlined”
385. “The only way you find what your limits are is by pushing them.”
386. “A project is like love; it has clear intentions at the beginning, but it can get complicated.”
387. “You may con a person into committing to an unreasonable deadline, but you cannot bully them into meeting it.”
388. “The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.”
389. If you’re like most of the consultants, you’re either spending WAY too much time with useless (manual) marketing (e.g. going crazy about junky sharing & liking on social media channels) - or, conversely, none at all.
390. “For a project plan to be effective it must equally address the parameters of ‘activity time’ and ‘activity logic’. This logical relationship is required to model the effect schedule variance will have down stream in the project. “
391. “The people in our lives are like flowering plants; they need regular watering and the occasional application of nutrients.”
392. If you are always saying ‘Yes’ to your clients, you’ll end up engaging in far too many activities, and you won’t have the time you need to dedicate to your top priorities, deepen your expertise in your niche, and build authority.
393. “The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre
394. “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”
395. I am damned serious when I say that 50% of my past success as a consultant was my state of mind to be able to free-up 20-30% of my time to grow my consulting business.
396. “That which is measured improves.”
397. “When you serve the customer better, they always return on your investment.”
398. “I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it. “
399. “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence. It is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
400. “In giving presentations, use the 10/20/30 rule….use only 10 slides, take 20 minutes maximum, and use at least 30-point fonts.”
401. “Confidence is contagious; so is lack of confidence.”
402. “Consulting offered me an opportunity to see a lot of different businesses in different regions of the world, to see how textiles were being affected by foreign competition, how technology was changing.”
403. “Action is the foundational key to all success.”
404. “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
405. “Set your course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”
406. “If it is not documented, it doesn’t exist … As long information is retained in someone’s head, it is vulnerable to loss.”
407. “I do less admin and do more of what I love”
408. “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatreds. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
409. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
410. “To contract new debts is not the way to pay old ones.”
411. “Get out of the way.”
412. “Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
413. “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
414. “HOW DARE YOU TRY TO CHARGE PEOPLE FOR SOMETHING YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT?”
415. “Since I started working with you, I’ve made more money in that time span than any other time since I’ve been in business.”
416. “I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity.”
417. “I used to work for a management consulting company, so I dressed differently – business casual, probably a lot of things from Banana Republic. My wardrobe now is definitely more expensive, but I always dress for the occasion.”
418. “All work is creative work if done by a thinking mind”
419. “Success is the delivery of a product that meets expectation”
420. “Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.”
421. “Whilst you can practice good project management without EVM, you cannot practice EVM effectively without good project management.”
422. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
423. “Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.”
424. “If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.”
425. “Being a consultant is like flying first-class. The food is terrific, the drinks are cold. But all you can do is walk up to the pilot and say, ‘bank left.’ If you’re in management, you have the controls.”
426. “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
427. “Hell, there are no rules here — we’re trying to accomplish something. “
428. “Huge timesaver”
429. “If you concede the obvious you’re conceding nothing, but you gain back credibility. That’s a trade you should make every time.”
430. “A task is not done until it is done.”
431. “Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.”
432. “Working ten hour days allows you to fall behind twice as fast as you could working five hour days.”
433. “Predictable Profits transformed our sales team and grew our revenue 40% in the first year that we worked with them. Having Predictable Profits as an objective, trusted advisor who can look at your company from the outside in has been invaluable. They are able to pinpoint the exact issues that are holding you back from a goal and develop actionable tactics for overcoming them.”
434. “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
435. “When you blame others, you give up your power to change.”
436. “Backbone of my business”
437. “Keep your face always toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.”
438. “It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things “
439. “In business, its very important to do consistent market research. It's very important to understand your customers and potential customers. The more you understand them, the better you'll be able to add value to their lives, and the more they'll pay for that value.
440. “We’ve been working with Predictable Profits for several years now and it’s helped myself and my team take the company to the next level (even during the pandemic!). In fact, we just had the BEST quarter in our company history – exceeding every KPI we set to achieve! I can confidently say working with Predictable Profits was one of the best decisions we’ve made!”
441. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: The fear of failure.”
442. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
443. “An organization becomes bewildered rather than energized when it’s asked to do too much at once.”
444. “The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.”
445. Developing ‘the right voice’ creates a much deeper connection with your potential clients as they will understand what and who you are standing for.
446. “The companies that survive longest are the ones that work out what they uniquely can give to the world, not just growth or money but their excellence, their respect for others, or their ability to make people happy. Some call those things a soul.”
447. “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
448. “You can celebrate accomplishments, but after a while, you need to start celebrating the speed at which you’re traveling instead of the destination
449. “Successful organizations make habits of things others don’t like to do, or don’t find time to do.”
450. “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
451. “Since working with Predictable Profits, our revenue has increased consistently from one record-breaking month to another (even during the pandemic!). In fact, we just closed our best back-to-back quarters in company history (by a lot!)! The actionable guidance and support that I get from Predictable Profits is exactly what we need. I look forward to continuing my work with Predictable Profits . This has been one of the best decisions I’ve made for my business. Thank you.”
452. “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
453. “Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing … layout, processes, and procedures.”
454. “Change your thoughts and you change your world.”
455. “When a project has an ample budget, I am interested now in using bigger units of materials.”
456. “It’s the fricking reality that destroys plans.”
457. “Good leaders do not take on all the work themselves; neither do they take all the credit.”
458. “Speed is useful only if you are running in the right direction.”
459. “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete. “
460. “If you have the option, hire Predictable Profits. It’s a GAME CHANGER.
461. “We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.”
462. “All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.”
463. If you consider marketing as ‘beneath you’ or as an annoying distraction on top of the ‘real work’, you won’t get anywhere in your consulting business development these days.
464. “How does a project get to be a year late? One day at a time.”
465. “The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.”
466. “We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”
467. “An obstacle is often a stepped stone.”
468. Your fear of narrowing your consulting positioning is the fastest way to becoming commoditized as a consultant.
469. “What we are looking for is managers who are awake enough to alter the world as they find it, to make it harmonize with what they and their people are trying to accomplish.”
470. Publicly declaring your expertise helps you tremendously with positioning, focus, saying no to other work, developing the right marketing messaging & content and attracting the ideal client, to name a few.
471. “At Mayflower-Plymouth, we’re helping businesses and cities make significant improvements with our management consulting services. And for that, we’re making the world a better place. And we’re making a lot of money - many millions of dollars - by helping others and making their lives better.”
472. “With managing a business, you need to Invest in good software and or good data mining systems. Run your numbers routinely. Take a look at your revenues - when is the money typically coming in, from where, can you identify any patterns in your revenues? Then take a look at your expenses - analyze the numbers and identify patterns. Why? Because Identifying patterns and extracting actionable items from your revenue and expense data will result in the clarity you need to make good business decisions.”
473. “Think Big. Try small. Then adjust and go like hell.”
474. “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.”
475. “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for
476. “In short, they’re a bit like a referee at a sporting event: Do a good job and nobody notices; make a mistake and the finger pointing begins.”
477. “The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.”
478. “My best friend in scaling my business”
479. I’ve always set myself the target of creating actions that will lead to at least a 20-30% in available time to devote to my content marketing and business development.
480. “Project managers rarely lack organisational visibility, enjoy considerable variety in their day- to-day duties, and often have the prestige associated with work on the enterprise’s high- priority objectives. “
481. “So you’re not a “sales guy” (or gal). B-a-l-o-n-e-y. We’re all “sales guys” … if – if! – we care enough about our project.”
482. “I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do
483. “‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end; then stop.’”
484. “Leadership is the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared
485. “Any person who selects a goal in life which can be fully achieved, has already defined his own limitations”
486. “Patience: This is the greatest business asset. Wait for the right time to make your moves.”
487. “Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better”
488. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man”
489. “It’s a funny thing about life: If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.”
490. “You can’t be a professor without having been a student. You can’t be a consultant without having been a research associate. So, if you outsource the least sophisticated jobs, at some stage, the next step of the ladder has to follow.”
491. “In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves
492. “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
493. “If I’ve got a problem with one of my clients that needs to get solved, guess what I’m going to do? I’m going to call them up, and I’m going to say, ‘Hey, here’s what’s going on. This is the situation. This thing went sideways. I didn’t expect it. Now it’s going to take me some more time to get you what you need.’ But I’m going to do that upfront.”
494. “Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating the talents of those who work for us and pointing them towards a certain goal.”
495. It's cool to see everybody come together and do their own thing, but there's never been any drama. I never saw any on the X-Men set, and I never saw any on the Horror Story set. - Author: Evan Peters
496. “These golf people seem unnaturally obsessed. They dress kind of funny too, and it's become a running joke for Gretchen and I to e-mail the most ridiculous golfing pictures back and forth to each other. Sometimes she adds hysterical captions. She never puts them on PitchBitch, though. We can't threaten the gravy train.”
497. “My personal philosophy is not to undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible. “
498. “Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.”
499. I have been and still am devoting a considerable amount of time to develop and plan my content. It has been and still is a key driver of trust and credibility building and, as a result of course, of business growth.
500. “To succeed, or even just to survive, businesses need to be able to change in
501. “Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.”
502. “Don’t let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn’t go with it.”
503. Saying ‘No’ to 95% of things empowered me to say ‘Yes’ to only the right things and, as a result, massively deepened my expertise and carved out time to develop smart visibility in the market.
504. “Business has only two functions – marketing and Innovation.”
505. “Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof.”
506. “I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be
507. “A project ain’t over until the fat cheque is cashed”
508. “Don’t let anyone bullshit you–no one’s yet reinvented the practice of management for the information age. Certainly the priests of conventional management wisdom–the Harvard Business School, McKinsey & Co. and the exec ed boffins at G.E. don’t have the answers. What does their dressed-up, buttoned-down, shiny-toed view of management have to offer Ed McCracken, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and their ilk? The machine age was an Atlantic phenomenon; the information age is a Pacific phenomenon. Is it mere coincidence that Wang, DEC, IBM, Unisys and Lotus have all fallen victim, to one degree or another, to West Coast competitors?”
509. “If an IT project works the first time, it was a very small and simple project.”
510. “I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.”
511. “Instead of being a teacher, I got a job with a company called Bain & Co., consulting firm, and they taught me how to build businesses.”
512. “To get Game-Changing results, start focusing on Game-Changing thoughts.”
513. “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
514. “In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
515. “I’m doing a little consulting. I’m somewhat retired, still a director of a company or two.”
516. “Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.”
517. “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
518. “Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down.”
519. Educate your buyers/clients, share best practice with them, tell them what to look out for, give them valuable tips on how to achieve success, demonstrate how you’ve helped others in their shoes. Share your expertise. Share. And share again.
520. “A must-have!”
521. Most consultants I know are pretty active on Linkedin but unfortunately in a totally ineffective way! They believe they do a lot but it doesn't drive business at all.
522. “The paradox of Asia is that Japan is a profoundly socialist country on which capitalism was imposed whilst China is a profoundly capitalist country on which socialism was imposed.”
523. “Testing proves the presence of bugs but not their absence. “
524. “A good design is not a democratic consensus.”
525. To develop deep expertise and authority in your domain, you'd better understand the specific pains of your clients and make sure you re-validate those pains regularly (pains evolve!).
526. “The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.”
527. Breakthrough Management Group International (BMGI) India is the strong Global Consulting firm mainly focuses to provide consultant services establish a profitable business with the challenging success. - Author: Breakthrough Management Group International
528. “So simple”
529. “Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.”
530. At the end of the day, your ego can become the biggest enemy to your consulting success.
531. If you don’t take the time to market your consulting business, you won’t have a business to market soon!
532. “The difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do.”
533. “If, on your team, everyone’s input is not encouraged, valued, and welcome, why call it a team?”
534. “It isn’t uncommon for managers at senior levels of large organizations to be
535. To be honest, I was afraid of missing out on ANY opportunity - even the wrong and low ticket ones - because saying ‘No’ would have felt like surrender.
536. “Those who have stopped learning find themselves equipped for a world that no longer exists.”
537. “Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.”
538. “Never Give up. Today is hard and tomorrow will be Worse, but the day after Tomorrow will be Sunshine.”
539. “An organization becomes bewildered rather than energized when it’s asked to do
540. “Expect client issues, and don’t get down on yourself. They might feel like a punch in the stomach, and you might find yourself wondering if you’re in the right business. Consulting can feel like riding a roller coaster sometimes, with many ups and down. So, what helps? Always be honest with yourself and your clients. Understand that when these challenges arise, it’s better to deal with them right away rather than hiding and hoping they’ll go away on their own.”
541. “As long as businesses have problems that need solutions, consultants will be valuable.”
542. Outline your skills
543. “Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans: it’s lovely to be silly at the right moment. “
544. “Leadership is the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations.”
545. “Capital isn’t scarce. Vision is.”
546. “Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.”
547. “Persevere.”
548. “Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
549. “Create context.
550. Consulting clients are searching for subject matter experts and trusted advisors to help solve their problems. Clients have more options today than ever before - there are more consultants and experts and advisors than there ever have been in the past and buyers can find anything in seconds.
551. “Project management will become a recognized profession when jokes are made about the practitioners.”
552. The U.S. has spent billions of dollars on educating and supporting teachers or developing curricula but no resources are applied to 'improving the brain' that a student brings to the classroom. - Author: Naveen Jain
553. “It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.”
554. “Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will
555. “I am such a pessimist that every project has surpassed what I envisioned.”
556. “When you compete with a person, you only have to be as good or better than the
557. “No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you’ll see why.”
558. Start loving the boredom of consistency and repeatability. It’s the backbone of your authority — and your business. Through the (boring) repetition, you will learn the deeper patterns, challenges, risks, and solutions that 99% of your competition will never know, because they weren’t willing to put in the work.
559. “Great customer service is a critical competitive advantage for a business.”
560. “The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do.”
561. “Project Management is… The art of creating the illusion that any outcome is the result of a series of predetermined, deliberate acts when, in fact, it was dumb luck. “
562. “In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.”
563. “Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups” Wethern’s Law of Suspended Judgement”
564. “Every business can benefit from good quality management consulting services. Consultants are able to gather, assemble and utilize data in unique ways. Consultants also have perspectives that are likely to be unique compared to the perspectives you find internal to your business.”
565. “The real competition out there isn’t for clients, it’s for people. And we look to hire people who are, first, very smart; second, insecure and thus driven by their insecurity; and third, competitive. Put together 3,000 of these egocentric, task-oriented, achievement-oriented people, and it produces an atmosphere of something less than humility. Yes, it’s elitist. But don’t you think there has to be room somewhere in this politically correct world for something like this?”
566. Many years ago, I told myself: “Luk, you either specialize and stand out in the very crowded consulting market or you’d better start looking for a regular job”.
567. Kevin Systrom of Instagram used to work for us as a consultant in the early days of Mint. I knew him a long time ago. Maybe I could have gotten in there. But with photo sharing, I don't know if there's an obvious business model. I don't think there's a competitive, sustainable advantage. - Author: Aaron Patzer
568. “I’ve been working with the Predictable Profits for over 2 years now and the organization is incredible from top to bottom. Not only is everyone gifted and has the business acumen of a Fortune CEO. [Predictable Profits] is like a heat-seeking missile for your business. I think of having these folks on my side similar to using cheat codes in a video game.
569. Building a unique consulting niche requires a lot of self-confidence and guts to turn that narrow positioning into a compelling business model.
570. “Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances “
571. “Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer.”
572. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
573. You need to clearly define your ideal client profile, and thoroughly discuss this with potential clients upfront before saying ‘Yes’ to collaborating.
574. “Clients love how easy my systems are”
575. “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
576. Keep your audience at the forefront of your mind and your goals, and use your unique story to show them how they can implement what you’ve learned to achieve similar results. That's what I did all those years.
577. “The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary.”
578. “A meeting moves at the speed of the slowest mind in the room.”
579. “The insidious thing about command and control management is that it works.”
580. “Working with [Predictable Profits] has been one of the best things I’ve ever done from a business standpoint… we’ll double our business for one reason, because we’ve had the opportunity to work with [Predictable Profits].”
581. “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
582. “Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.”
583. “Planning without action is futile, action without planning is fatal“
584. “Never promise to complete a project within six months of the end of the year–in either direction.”
585. “No major project is ever installed on time, within budget, with the same staff that started it. “
586. “Simple Works.”
587. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
588. “One aspect of effectiveness is to simply not do things that don’t contribute to the goals of the business.”
589. “At the end of the day, if you’re wasting your time by not investing in yourself, you’re going to waste away—and that would be the greatest waste of all.”
590. “We will either find a way, or make one.” – Hannibal
591. “Individuals and organizations that are good react quickly to change. Individuals and organizations that are great
592. Clients are searching for subject matter experts and trusted advisors to help solve their problems. And those clients have more options today than ever before - there are more consultants and experts and advisors than there ever have been in the past and buyers can find anything in seconds.
593. “A project is complete when it starts working for you, rather than you working for it.”
594. “You don’t have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream.”
595. “The more I’ve thought about it over the years, the more I’ve concluded that what really leads to outstanding consultants, and I think then outstanding performance in almost anything you can think of, is the willingness to really take risks, take risks with your thinking, to take risks in how far you’re trying to push the client, and not to be conservative and too cautious. I had a conversation with a colleague recently who was learning how to ski, and he said that, in the course of his ski week, he concluded that, if you weren’t falling, you weren’t learning, and I think that’s, you know, a general rule of life. You’ve got to take risks and be willing to fail.”
596. “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
597. “Make a careful list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Don’t do them to others, ever. Make another list of things done for you that you loved. Do them for others, always.”
598. Whether you like it or not, content management is a top priority to avoid becoming irrelevant as a consultant. Authorities write. Period.
599. “The things we fear most in organizations – fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances – are the primary sources of creativity.”
600. “Can you imagine running a travel company in the middle of COVID?
601. “A good plan can help with risk analyses but it will never guarantee the smooth running of the project.”
602. “’Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all
603. “The work begins here.”
604. “I want miracles for peanuts.”
605. “Don’t deliver a product, deliver an experience.”
606. “Failures are divided into two classes – those who thought and never did, and
607. “There are two types of people in the world, those who say ‘there are two types of people in the world’ and those who don’t.”
608. “The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary.”
609. “The conditions attached to a promise are forgotten and the promise is remembered. “
610. Openly sharing all my learnings has enabled me to create consulting opportunities that I would not have had otherwise. Even in a deep crisis, there's always opportunity. As long as you can get into a helping/sharing instead of a selling mindset.
611. “You learn in this business: If you want a friend, get a dog.”
612. “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else. “
613. “What does not destroy me makes me stronger.”
614. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
615. “To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.”
616. I am obsessed with organizing my work to free up time for business development, and I am on a ruthless search for productivity gains, systems, and processes. People are always surprised when I tell them about ‘having a time strategy’.
617. My vocation is to make my life an act of worship - Author: Ashley Judd
618. In a way, Google is encouraging us to become more and more specialized in order to become and remain relevant.
619. “Some people make things happen, some watch things happen, while others wonder
620. “The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.”
621. “My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.”
622. “If an IT project works the first time, it was in your nightly dreams. Time to wake up and get to work.”
623. “I don’t work on a project unless I believe that it will dramatically improve life for a bunch of people. “
624. “New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.”
625. “PMs are the most creative pros in the world; we have to figure out everything that could go wrong, before it does”
626. “A project without a critical path is like a ship without a rudder.”
627. “I have never believed in the Wizard of Oz theory of consulting, that I am all-knowing and all-seeing, and that everyone around me is kind of a backbencher.”
628. “Sometimes you have to experiment with a lot of ideas and see which one sticks. If you’re unsure, let the market decide.”
629. “If you can keep your head when everyone around you is panicking … It’s a sure sign that that you have not understood the seriousness of the situation.”
630. “As a consultant, if you don’t specialize, then it’s hard to get great at one thing. It’s hard to attract your ideal customer because your message is as diffused as your offer. What I find is the path for new consultants, distill down then when you think you are done, distill down further and get down to your core offering.”
631. “Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman.”
632. “I’m a project manager, not a magician. Magicians have way cooler hats.”
633. “The well-satisfied customer will bring the repeat sale that counts.”
634. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure
635. “Success in life is about project management. Determine deliverables, make milestones, and always pursue the critical path.”
636. “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.”
637. “My first six years in the business were hopeless. There are a lot of times when you sit and you say ‘Why am I doing this? I’ll never make it. It’s just not going to happen. I should go out and get a real job, and try to survive.’”
638. “By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination.”
639. The fear to narrow your expertise domain is the fastest way to becoming commoditized as a consultant.
640. “Out there in some garage is an entrepreneur who’s forging a bullet with your
641. “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”
642. “A deliberate search for a plan of action that will develop a business’s competitive advantage and compound it. For any company the search is an iterative process that begins with a recognition of where you are and what you have now. Your most dangerous competitors are those that are most like you. The differences between you and your competitors are the basis of your advantage. If you are in business and self-supporting you already have some kind of competitive advantage no matter how small or subtle. Otherwise you would have gradually lost customers faster than you gained them. The objective is to enlarge the scope of your advantage which can only happen at someone else’s expense.”
643. “Don’t give up, the beginning is always the hardest.”
644. “A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.”
645. “Don’t be afraid to assert yourself, have confidence in your abilities and don’t let the bastards get you down.”
646. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”
647. “Business is the salt of life.”
648. “Project management can … be defined as a way of developing structure in a complex project, where the independent variables of time, cost, resources and human behaviour come together. “
649. “If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business.”
650. For more than 10 years, I was consistent and persistent in building my digital presence. I wrote close to 150 case studies, articles and columns. My ultimate writing focus: ‘What knowledge did I acquire that would be valuable to share?’ Experts write.
651. “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence”
652. “The economy is always changing. So your business should always be changing. Managing a business includes adapting to change, evolving with change and sometimes pioneering those changes and evolutions.”
653. “Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well
654. “A winner never stops trying.”
655. “Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.”
656. When you least expect it, you run in to an old friend from school, or the neighbour's cat, not Mary the Virgin Mother of God. - Author: Margot McCuaig
657. “Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.”
658. “Manager! Have brain – use it!”
659. “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
660. “Nobody knows how Honda is organized, except that it uses lots of project teams and is quite flexible. “
661. “Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes it’s built on catastrophe.”
662. Most consultants struggle to hone in on their expertise and build a unique niche in order to stand out as an expert in a market or expertise domain because it’s a scary exercise.
663. “Any committee that is the slightest use is composed of people who are too busy to want to sit on it for a second longer than they have to.”
664. “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the
665. “The most expensive time in a manager’s life is the time between when you truly lose faith in someone and when you do something about it.”
666. “Those who say it cannot be done should get out of the way of those who are
667. “Nothing would be done at all, if a man waited till he could do it so well, that no one could find fault with it.”
668. “When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.”
669. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.”
670. “Bonsai does the hard work”
671. Marketing in consultancy is NOT about sales. Marketing isn’t about pushing a product or service. Instead, marketing is about sharing your knowledge and providing something of authentic value to your clients.
672. “Make the customer the hero of your story.”
673. “With ISO 9000 you can still have terrible processes and products. You can
674. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
675. One small changed family doesn't calculate into a world that has been spinning for a billion years. But one small change makes the world spin differently in a billion ways for one family. - Author: Mary E. Pearson
676. “There is a theory that paradigms break through on the fringe of your business before they reach the center.”
677. “Get the right people. Then no matter what all else you might do wrong after that, the people will save you. That’s what management is all about.”
678. “The Golden Rule for Every Business is this: Put Yourself in your Customer’s Place.”
679. “’In Search of Excellence’ was an afterthought, the runt of the McKinsey consulting litter, a hip-pocket project that was never supposed to amount to much.”
680. “Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.”
681. “I feel more confident”
682. “Every year in consulting is like three years in the corporate world because you have multiple clients, multiple issues – you grow so much.”
683. “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.”
684. “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
685. “First, think. Second, believe. Third, dream. And finally, dare.”
686. “The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.”
687. “Incrementalism is innovation’s worst enemy.”
688. “Make an extensive table of project ‘deliverables’. Label one column ‘as requested’. Create another column labeled ‘could be’. Make each ‘could be’ wild and woolly! “
689. Putting in the effort toward creating valuable content gave me the privilege of becoming a ‘visible authority’ globally. It didn’t happen overnight. It took a lot of hard work, a structured approach, and a laser-sharp focus.
690. “If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”
691. “If you concede the obvious you’re conceding nothing, but you gain back
692. “Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing.”
693. “Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.”
694. “I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
695. Guy Kawasaki inspired me to become a baker instead of an eater: 'Eaters want a bigger slice of an existing pie, bakers want to make a bigger pie and share it with others'. Ever since then, this concept has been my guiding principle in consulting.
696. “Luck is being ready for the chance.”
697. “Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit – Ovid (Latin to English translation). “Add little to little and there will be a big pile” “
698. “You have always provided so many valuable take-aways. Thank you! You’re a great mentor.”
699. “Customer service is an opportunity to exceed your customer’s expectations.”
700. “…while extraordinary products and unique services still afford a competitive advantage, the one advantage that stands the test of time…is people.”
701. “The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and to influence their actions.”
702. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”
703. “If I had nine hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first six sharpening my ax.”
704. I kept challenging myself all those years to say ‘NO’ to anything that fell outside of my narrowly positioned area of expertise. I stopped chasing the next client, I accepted that I might earn less. In return, I was able to free up time to grow my business on the back of my earned visibility in my market.
705. “When you first consider pricing based on value creation you naively think it is simply a way to charge more, but the deeper truth is it forces you to structure your engagements to create value rather than deliver services. When done properly, everybody wins, and increased fees are simply a delightful consequence of putting your focus on the client and the question of how can you help create more value.”
706. “As a consultant, your product is your expertise. Your content demonstrates your expertise. By creating and publishing content, you provide your potential clients with value and a “sample” of your expertise. If your content is helpful, then you’ll increase the chance they get to know you, like you and trust you.”
707. ”Project management is like juggling three balls – time, cost and quality. Program management is like a troupe of circus performers standing in a circle, each juggling-three balls and swapping balls from time to time.”
708. “If you can’t describe your strategy in twenty minutes, simply and in plain language, you haven’t got a plan. ‘But,’ people may say, ‘I’ve got a complex strategy. It can’t be reduced to a page.’ That’s nonsense. That’s not a complex strategy. It’s a complex thought about the strategy.”
709. “Like putting my finances on auto-pilot”
710. “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’”
711. “How fast you are moving is more important than where you are.”
712. “Change hurts. Risk as you expect others to risk.”
713. “Hanging a sign on a cow that says ‘I am a horse’ does not make it a horse.”
714. “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. “
715. “We live in a culture that’s been hijacked by the management consultant ethos. We want everything boiled down to a Power Point slide. We want metrics and ‘show me the numbers.’ That runs counter to the immensely complex nature of so many social, economic and political problems. You cannot devise an algorithm to fix them.”
716. “There are two types of software : bad software and the next release”
717. “Do what is right, not what you think the high headquarters wants or what you think will make you look good.”
718. “The real problem is what to do with problem solvers after the problem is solved”
719. Consultants ask me: how am I supposed to grow by doing less? The answer: saying ‘No’ to 95% of things will empower you to say ‘Yes’ to only the right things and, as a result, massively deepen your expertise and carve out time to strive for smart visibility in the market.
720. “Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it.”
721. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
722. “It is always easier to talk about change than to make it. “
723. “If necessity is the mother of invention, discontent is the father of progress.”
724. “In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.”
725. “Momentum is a fragile force. Its worst enemy: p-r-o-c-r-a-s-t-i-n-a-t-i-o-n. Its best friend: a deadline (think Election Day). Implication no. 1 (and there is no no. 2): Get to work! NOW!”
726. “A project is complete when it starts working for you, rather than you working for it. “
727. “Marketing requires continuous and consistent effort. It takes an average of seven “touches” to turn a lukewarm prospect into a customer.”
728. “Some people make things happen, some watch things happen, while others wonder what has happened.”
729. Most consultants are afraid that if they niche down and say ‘No’ to potential clients, they are going to lose business and miss out on new opportunities.
730. “You do not lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.”
731. “Project management is like juggling three balls – time, cost and quality. Programme management is like a troupe of circus performers standing in a circle, each juggling three balls and swapping balls from time to time. “
732. “Fit no stereotypes. Don’t chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team’s mission. “
733. Rather than being laser sharp in their consulting positioning, most consultants are trying to show expertise in many areas and take on any remotely related opportunity that comes their way. This not only leaves them spread thin and disorganized but it also totally confuses their clients.
734. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”
735. “The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.”
736. “One of the keys to being extraordinary is knowing what rules to follow and what rules to break.”
737. “The biggest mistake when trying to resolve a conflict with someone is focusing on what you want to say and not on what you need to hear.”
738. “We all have a responsibility to be efficient stewards of resources.”
739. A consultant is someone who saves his client almost enough to pay his fee. - Author: Arnold H. Glasow
740. Attach charges to your services
741. “It’s been the most stress-free year of my life!”
742. “Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.”
743. “You have to work on the business first before it works for you.”
744. “If one wishes to be a great project manager, one needs to talk less and write more.”
745. “What do you do if you’re an executive who resigns? You declare yourself a consultant.”
746. “Don’t look where you fall, but where you slipped.”
747. “We’ve seen huge growth since working with Predictable Profits. [Predictable Profits] constantly challenges us to think outside of the box and be our best. What’s more, he truly cares about our team and success. If you’re looking for a business coach, look no further! “
748. “I just wanted to let you know that I have seen big improvements in my company in the 4-weeks that I have been working with [Predictable Profits]. Our team is already more inspired and selling at a much higher level. I cannot thank [Predictable Profits] enough for what she has helped me achieve in a short amount of time. I am looking forward to seeing what the future holds.”
749. “As AI technology matures paired with the continued implementation of Blockchain technology, I think we'll see a lot of analyst, educator and lawyer jobs for example be repositioned into the consulting industry. Consulting will pretty much be a broad category for all jobs involved in the gathering, utilization and sale of actionable data.”
750. “If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”
751. “Don’t count the days, Make the days count.”
752. Enumerate the solutions
753. “I’m not young enough to know everything.”
754. “To be successful you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart.”
755. What's really amusing is that you see - when you look at everybody's statements that - on both sides of the aisle, they've talked out of both sides of their mouth, depending on who's in power and who's not. - Author: Nina Totenberg
756. “Humans make all their decisions, every single one, by reference to our emotional memory, which is in the neocortex. Our decision by definition is a decision to feel comfortable on some timescale. It’s a feeling, “I will do that if I feel that I’ll be more comfortable in the near mid and long-term.” We predict how we’ll feel before we move or act. Stories are a wonderful mechanism because when we tell stories about other people who are in the process of acting, we can infer how that person feels and why they’re acting. We’re passing emotional reasoning as well as rational reasoning in a story, which is a crucial thing to understand about decision-making.”
757. “QuickBooks 24/7 Support Phone Number +1-877-788-4840
758. “He who wants to do everything will never do anything.”
759. “Margins matter in business. If a business has $1,000,000 dollars in revenues but $1.5 million in expenses, the business is heading for self destruction due to a liquidity problem. Meanwhile, if another business only has $100,000 in revenues and $50,000 in expenses, it’s doing better than the first business even though it has less revenues. And a business with $60,000 in revenues but only $2,000 in expenses technically has a greater margin than both of the other businesses. Revenues are very important, but the key is to both maximize revenues and minimize expenses so that you have the widest profit margin possible.”
760. Your ego is detrimental to narrowing your positioning, focusing on your single biggest mastery, and refusing all other inadequate work.
761. “The only thing certain about any negotiation is that it will lead to another negotiation.”
762. “A life-saver!”
763. “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”
764. “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”
765. “One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.”
766. “There’s nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team.”
767. “The higher you go in a company, the less oxygen there is, so supporting intelligent life becomes difficult.”
768. “To be successful, you must act big, think big and talk big.”
769. “I’ve learned a lot on the fly, and I think, actually, my academic and management consulting background has enabled me to quickly pick up on a lot of disciplines.”
770. There are many common misconceptions about how much time it actually takes to develop content, and the bottom line is: it takes FAR less time than you think.
771. Almost every consultant I meet has some kind of (big or small) ambition to become considered an expert. But most of them also consider business development as ‘something they will do in between two projects’ (or something to ‘delegate’ to marketing in larger consultancy firms).
772. “CONSULTING: If you’re not a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.”
773. “It pays for itself”
774. “Project management is … The art of creating the illusion that any outcome is the result of a series of predetermined, deliberate acts when, in fact, it was dumb luck. “
775. “‘Don’t use a sledgehammer to crack a walnut’, but equally don’t agree important things informally where there is a chance of a disagreement later over what was agreed. “
776. “Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I’ll understand”
777. “A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with
778. “You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence and success. The problem is, you just don’t see them.”
779. We are all creative, from the mother adding an extra pinch of garlic to her meal, to the entrepreneur launching a brand new product, to the business consultant who creates a more effective way for corporate departments to communicate. The call requires creativity. - Author: Shannon Tanner
780. “The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but
781. “The most important part of your professional wardrobe is your personality. Wear it with style.”
782. “You are your best intervention.”
783. “Find the client in yourself.”
784. “As consultants, we need to be ruthless in discerning what is important and what is just noise.”
785. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
786. “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
787. “A friendship founded on business is a good deal better than a business founded on friendship.”
788. “Clients take me more seriously”
789. “Success is how high you bounce after you hit bottom.”
790. “Whom the gods wish to destroy they send 40 years of success.”
791. “Where do you put the fear when you choose to innovate? The fear is there, but you have to find a place to put it.”
792. “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
793. “Know when to cut your losses if necessary. Don’t let your desire to succeed be the enemy of good judgment. If Napoleon had left Moscow immediately, he may have returned with a salvageable army. ”
794. “The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.”
795. “The budget evolved from a management tool into an obstacle to management.”
796. “There is a theory that paradigms break through on the fringe of your business
797. “No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did he would cease
798. “Resources – We cannot drive people; we must direct their development. Teach and lead.”
799. “The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.”
800. Without prioritizing your visibility, your consulting work might be at risk in 3-5 years (or even faster)!
801. “The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far greater value than what you get. “
802. “Never ever give up! Constant effort is the key to success.”
803. If you really want to develop your consulting business, you will have to get rid of the vicious mindset that tells you ‘I don’t have time to win more clients’ (because the client work comes first).
804. “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.”
805. “If you don’t make mistakes, you aren’t really trying.”
806. “Since working with Predictable Profits, our revenue has dramatically increased. In fact, we’re on track to having our best year ever! The support and guidance is exactly what we need as we continue to scale and expand into new verticals. Hiring Predictable Profits was easily the best decision we’ve made for our business, and I hope to continue working with them for many, many years to come.”
807. “Trying to manage a project without project management is like trying to play a football game without a game plan.”
808. “Make a Customer, Not a sale.”
809. There's so much learning in in-depth client pain validation interviews. You just can't overlook the (evolving) needs of your future buyers when developing your consulting offering, expertise and authority.
810. “The project manager must be able to develop a fully integrated information and control system to plan, instruct, monitor and control large amounts of data, quickly and accurately to facilitate the problem-solving and decision- making process. “
811. “The only way you can coast is downhill!”
812. Without a clear message, a consultant can never get the right connection with their target clients, and it leads to poor relevance and visibility in Google on top.
813. “Business is not financial science, it’s about trading … buying and selling. It’s about creating a product or service so good that people will pay for it.”
814. “The testers won’t break the system but the user who thinks the cd-rom drive as a drinks holder will “
815. “Customers, I realized, don’t care about functions or specific activities that
816. “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
817. What a wretched thing is all fame! A renown of the highest sort endures, say, for two thousand years. And then? Why, then, a fathomless eternity swallows it. Work for eternity; not the meagre rhetorical eternity of the periodical critics, but for the real eternity wherein dwelleth the Divine. - Author: Thomas Carlyle
818. “Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.”
819. “A meeting is an event in which minutes are kept and hours are lost.”
820. “Working with [my coach] and Predictable Profits was one of the best decisions I have made for my company. From the start he had tactical ideas to help increase my brand presence and profits. My sales have almost doubled. Do yourself a favor and hire [Predictable Profits]!”
821. “Clients don’t take you seriously–and thus they don’t listen to you–unless you charge enough for them to notice. And when you set the price, it needs to be high enough to make you nervous that you won’t get it. Keep raising it until you’re nervous, and use round numbers, too ($20,000 and not $19,840).”
822. “Without [taking a process perspective of business], business improvement
823. “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”
824. “Customers, I realized, don’t care about functions or specific activities that occur within our organization. The end game is whether they are getting the right product at the right time at a competitive price.”
825. “The number one thing is to avoid trading time for money. Focus on value and tie it to the desired outcome. You never want to be considered a cost, but rather should be viewed as an investment. I’ve found that taking a stakeholder role is also rewarding and exciting.”
Comments