Business Lessons from the Best

Words of Wisdom from America's Top Entrepreneurs

This year promises to be full of difficult challenges and unique opportunities for small business owners nationwide. That makes right now an ideal time to seek inspiration and advice from the leaders who have proven their ability to overcome obstacles and achieve success despite difficult times.

This unique slideshow brings together key quotes that encapsulate the wisdom and advice of 15 remarkable American entrepreneurs. From Marc Andreessen to Sam Walton, each one of these titans found ways to change the world with their vision, hard work, and perseverance. And their pithy quotes -- covering everything from branding to leadership and beyond -- offer invaluable nuggets of wisdom for all small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com) on Branding

"A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn your reputation by trying to do hard things well." For creatively leading Amazon.com during the dot-com boom, Time magazine named Jeff Bezos its Person of the Year in 1999. In retrospect, his greater achievement may have been guiding his company through the dot-com bust and building it into America's largest online retailer while successfully diversifying into other lines of business, including the Kindle e-reader in 2007. Born to a teenage mother in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Bezos showed an early aptitude for science. He attended Princeton University, graduating with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. He founded Amazon.com in 1994. Today the company has a market capitalization of more than $80 billion.

Howard Schultz (Starbucks) on Building Your Team

"You can't expect your employees to exceed the expectations of your customers if you don't exceed your employees' expectations of management." Growing up poor in Brooklyn, New York, the son of a truck driver, Howard Schultz was the first person in his family to go to college. After graduating in 1975, he held several jobs, including a sales position at Xerox Corp. In 1979, Schultz joined Hammarplast, a Swedish drip coffee maker, as its general manager. Two years later he walked into Starbucks, a small, popular chain of coffee shops in Seattle, and his life changed. Schultz eventually bought the company, became its CEO, and expanded it from four stores to more than 16,000 today. With Schultz's emphasis on company-owned stores and his insistence on training and quality, Starbucks has become ubiquitous throughout the United States and in 50 other countries.

Larry Page Collaboration

(Google)

on

"If you can run the company a bit more collaboratively, you get a better result because you have more checking and balancing going on." Larry Page's parents were both computer science professors, so it's not surprising that he gravitated toward computers at an early age. Page attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering, and Stanford University, where he gained a master's in computer science. It was at Stanford that Page met Sergey Brin, a fellow Ph.D. candidate. After developing the PageRank algorithm, the men conceived the idea for a superior search engine. Google was founded in 1998 and quickly came to dominate online search and advertising while playing key roles in cloud computing, video, email, mobile communications, and many other growing businesses.

Bill Gates (Microsoft) Customer Service

on

"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." One of the leading entrepreneurs of the personal computer industry, Bill Gates discovered his interest in software at the age of 13. In 1973 he entered Harvard University, where he developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer, the MITS Altair. It's also where he met Steve Ballmer, who became a lifelong business partner at Microsoft Corp. Gates started the company in 1975, believing that the computer would become an indispensable tool in every home and office. Now chair of Microsoft and a major philanthropist, Gates is the world's secondwealthiest person, with an estimated worth of $53 billion.

Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines) on Financial Discipline

"We're very conservative from a fiscal standpoint. We never got dangerously in debt and never let costs get out of hand." Herb Kelleher is the cofounder and former CEO of Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, which changed the U.S. airline industry with its low-fare, low-cost business strategy. Since the company's inception in 1971, the hard-drinking, chain-smoking Kelleher believed that Southwest employees should have fun on the job and provide superior customer service. With 35,000 employees, Southwest is consistently named one of the best places to work in the U.S. In fact, the airline received 90,043 resumes in 2009, hiring only 831 people.

Steve Jobs (Apple) on Finding Your Bliss

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it." Steve Job's company, Apple Inc., has revolutionized the computer industry, the consumer electronics industry, and the music business -- not bad for a guy who once lost control of his company. Jobs cofounded Apple in 1976. The company's Macintosh, introduced in 1984, became the first successful small computer with a graphical user interface. But after an internal power struggle, Jobs left Apple in 1985 and founded NeXT Computer. Apple acquired NeXT in 1996, and Jobs returned to Apple in full force. He expanded Apple's products beyond its lineup of laptop and desktop computers, introducing the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, and the iPad in 2010.

Marc Andreessen (Netscape) on Hard Work

"A lot of this is sheer persistence. It's sheer persistence at one company or it's sheer persistence at whatever you're doing in the future." While still a college student, Marc Andreessen cocreated Mosaic, the first easy-to-use Web browser. After moving to Silicon Valley, he cofounded

Netscape Communications Corp., which was sold to AOL for $4.2 billion in 1998. Andreessen went on to start Loudcloud, which changed its name to Opsware and was sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Today he is a prominent venture capitalist who has invested in Ning, Digg, Twitter, and other firms. He is a director of HewlettPackard, Facebook, and eBay.

Sam Walton (Wal-Mart) on Leadership

"Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish." Born on a farm in Oklahoma during the Great Depression, Sam Walton founded Wal-Mart and Sam's Club. After working for J.C. Penney and completing a stint in the military, Walton took over his first variety store at the age of 26, making sure the retailer was stocked with a range of goods at low prices. That model would become the hallmark of his firm's success. The first WalMart opened in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962. Today, Wal-Mart is the nation's largest publicly traded company by revenue. Walton died in 1992.

Vera Wang (Designer) on Learning

"Don't be afraid to take time to learn. I worked for others for 20 years. They paid me to learn." After working as a senior fashion editor at Vogue and then for Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang opened her own business on Madison Avenue in 1990, designing bridal wear and evening gowns. In 1994, she started her own label. Her client list is extensive, and she's particularly known for dressing the stars for the Academy Awards. She has made wedding dresses for Mariah Carey, Chelsea Clinton, Alicia Keys, Khloe Kardashian, and Sharon Stone. She has also designed costumes for several figure skaters, including Michelle Kwan and Nancy Kerrigan.

Ted Turner (CNN) on SelfConfidence

"All my life, people have said that I wasn't going to make it." It was a novel idea at the time -- a 24-hour, live cable news channel -- and many experts thought it wouldn't succeed. But Ted Turner's CNN, launched in 1980, paved the way for a host of imitators. After building a reputation covering highprofile news events such as the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986 and the Persian Gulf War in 1991, today, CNN, a division of Time Warner, reaches 100 million U.S. households. Now the largest private landowner in the United States, Turner got his start in his father's billboard business.