Ken Goldstein > Quotes

“People. Products. Profits. In that order.”
― Ken Goldstein

“If you say it, mean it. If you mean it, do it.”
― Ken Goldstein

“We have FCC, abandoned alimony payments, assault and battery, Homeland Security escalation, and that's before we invite the IRS to take a walk on your wild side.”
― Ken Goldstein, This is Rage

“Pain has an odd way of expressing itself in the acts of business. No matter how many setbacks a leader might experience, there always seems to be a new opaque watermark of endurance testing, invisibly triggered for erratic combustion in each compounding decision. Every CEO in the world knows this, yet few have the good sense to walk away from the table when their cards are hot. Why win in Act Two when a comeback in Act Three gives you a longer biography? Ego is not so much about immortality as it is about demonstrating stately resistance to nightmarish attacks in public forums. Any good smack to the head is a continuity wake up call, or at least another invitation to be interviewed by Charlie Rose.”
― Ken Goldstein, This is Rage

“The question is, do you understand what it means to start over?”
― Ken Goldstein, From Nothing

“And I’m sure they all played by the rules, just liked I did. By the way, when I got laid off four and a half years ago, the stock of my company was at an all-time high. Our CEO retired. He was paid $70 million. Maybe now that is only worth $30 million. Or maybe in a few years if he plays by the rules it will be worth $130 million. I’ll still be worth nothing. And I won’t have a home or my children. You see why I wonder about playing by the rules? Because I always do. As a result, you’re standing where I sleep.”
― Ken Goldstein, This is Rage

“I don’t want other companies, I want this one,' insisted Seidelmeyer. 'I want all of their revenue and none of their people.'

'None of their people?' echoed Feretti. 'That’s good margin.”
― Ken Goldstein, This is Rage

“Who could have guessed at the dawn of the 21st century, the seminal technology upon which 5000 years of modern science had resulted was the click?”
― Ken Goldstein, This is Rage

“I’ve long subscribed to the notion that technology is advancing much faster than our ability to understand its implications.”
― Ken Goldstein

“Stay inquisitive. Question the potential interpretation of every collected data point. Remember that every successful idea has a life cycle, and a bad idea yesterday might be reformed under changing market forces as a good idea tomorrow.”
― Ken Goldstein

“I know you engineer types are excellent with mathematics, much better than I ever will be, but I do know the difference between a tiny pail of coins and big bucket of dollars. How can I take the pail when I am worth the bucket?”
― Ken Goldstein, This is Rage

“Don’t break your promise. Sweat the small stuff. Love your brand. Love your customers.”
― Ken Goldstein

“Trying wasn’t important because it wasn’t eternal. Talent was beyond conjecture. It could only be realized if it was meant to be.”
― Ken Goldstein, From Nothing

“Hope is the strength that keeps us going.”
― Ken Goldstein, Endless Encores

“Real talent harnesses what it has and unlocks what it doesn’t. There is natural ability, there is the discipline that develops natural ability, there is the unending study of one’s craft, and there is the exponential lifting of performance by the selfless combination of efforts.”
― Ken Goldstein, Endless Encores

“America is an idea more than anything. Promising ideas need to be nurtured, not battered.”
― Ken Goldstein

“Milk the cow, never feed her. Milk the cow, never feed her.”
― Ken Goldstein, From Nothing

“Writers by affliction are an idiosyncratic lot.”
― Ken Goldstein

“Creativity tempered by sound judgment is the currency of the new economy. It remains largely an open playing field for anyone who wants to relearn on a daily basis everything they thought they knew.”
― Ken Goldstein

“Timbre, baby, timbre.”
― Ken Goldstein, From Nothing

“It’s not enough to love your product. You have to love your customers, too, every single one—those who complain the most are the ones who control the keys to your survival.”
― Ken Goldstein, Endless Encores

“How strange it was that the music people favored defined them in so many ways—what they liked, what they rejected, what stuck with them from their school years, what they kept, what they burned into memory, what they let go. How was it that what they heard in a single decade—for most, their second on the planet—encoded a set of remembrances that stayed with them forever? It was simply commercial output, a business after all, nothing more than that—song factories a few years removed from Tin Pan Alley. It wasn’t Beethoven or Mozart, but it was glue—happy and sad, lived and imagined, the soundtrack of youth became the soundtrack of peoples’ lives.”
― Ken Goldstein, From Nothing

“If you don’t own the company, it’s their job, not yours. They lease it to you for a while for the value you create beyond what you cost. At the end of the lease, if you paid off the tab and have more valuable knowledge and skills than you had when you signed on, it’s a good deal for everyone. If you take their money but don’t get better at what you do, you got burned.”
― Ken Goldstein, Endless Encores

“Contemporary taste is fickle. Technology trends are more fickle. Customer loyalty is most fickle.”
― Ken Goldstein

“Irony is only a teacher if the comparisons we attempt are rooted in decency that is broadly recognized.”
― Ken Goldstein

“As someone who has spent three decades in media, I can tell you the technology around profiling is advancing way faster than our ability to digest its implications, and I urge you to continue asking a lot of questions and not take simple solutions at face value.”
― Ken Goldstein

“Forgive me, Paul, and I do get a little abrupt from time to time, but titles don’t mean a damn thing. Your boss can give you a title. Your boss can’t make people listen to you. You have to earn that. It doesn’t sound like you get that yet.”
― Ken Goldstein, Endless Encores

“Time was imperfect, but if redirected to positive ends, it would mend some remorse.”
― Ken Goldstein, From Nothing