We already treat our vendors well, but we can build up our reputation within the vendor community even more by really treating our vendors as true partners in the business. Most vendors aren’t happy dealing with most retailers because the retailers, especially the department stores, usually try to squeeze every last dollar out of them. We could be the first major retailer that doesn’t try to do that.

"The farther right you go on the curve, the more you will encounter the clients and customers who may need what you have, but don't necessarily believe what you believe. As clients, they are the ones for whom, no matter how hard you work, it's never enough. Everything usually boils down to price with them. They are rarely loyal. They rarely give referrals and sometimes you may even wonder out loud why you still do business with them. "They just don't get it," our gut tells us. The importance of identifying this group is so that you can avoid doing business with them."

The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.

We would have won, but the other guys gave the deal away.” “The customer selected us technically and thinks we are the better company, but our competitor just gave the product away. We would never sell so cheaply as it would hurt our reputation.” Anybody who has ever run an enterprise sales force has heard this lie before. You go into an account, you fight hard, and you lose. The sales rep, not wanting to shine the light on himself, blames the “used car dealer” rep from the other company. The CEO, not wanting to believe that she’s losing product competitiveness, believes the rep. If you hear this lie, try to validate the claim with the actual customer. I’ll bet you can’t.

3. Competitive markets destroy profits.

Let’s break it down. It wasn’t his product — that was great. It wasn’t his offer — he had a zero risk revshare model. It wasn’t his sales skills — he was a natural salesman. So, then what was the problem? He was selling to newspapers! His market was shrinking by 25 percent every year! He had looked at all the angles, except for the most obvious one.

"But at the same time, many of them deep down believe that they can’t make it. They don’t want any wealth creation to happen. So, they virtue signal by attacking the whole enterprise by saying, "Well, making money is evil. You shouldn’t do it.

poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure.

If you can’t convince yourself “When I’m down 25 percent, I’m a buyer” and banish forever the fatal thought “When I’m down 25 percent, I’m a seller,” then you’ll never make a decent profit in stocks.

Because in a business like that what your customers are buying is not your business’s ability to give them what they want but your ability to give them what they want. And that’s what’s wrong with it!

Marketing is what you do when your product is no good.

Silicon Valley mantra: Fail fast and fail cheap.

Companies that cannot bring themselves to pivot to a new direction on the basis of feedback from the marketplace can get stuck in the land of the living dead, neither growing enough nor dying, consuming resources and commitment from employees and other stakeholders but not moving ahead.

any business that’s in business to sell you a cure is motivated not to focus on prevention