Great Collection Of Leadership Quotes To Remember

Recently I read a post by John Rampton which collected 50 amazing leadership quotes by some of the most influential people that have lived or live on this planet. I wanted to share this list with you all, as this is something worth keeping around for when we need a little inspiration in our daily battles. 

These quotes will serve you, wether you're an employee of an organization, an entrepreneur, an athletic coach, small business owner, or any ordinary person going through the challenges that life puts us through. 

Enjoy and keep them handy!

1. "A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be." – Rosalynn Carter

2. “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.” - Lao Tzu

3. "It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse." -  Adlai E. Stevenson II

4. "Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand." – Colin Powell

5. “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.” - Max DePree

6. "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." – John Quincy Adams

7. “A leader is a dealer in hope.” - Napoleon Bonaparte

8. "A leader...is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind." - Nelson Mandela

9. “He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.” - Aristotle

10. "Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

11. "As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others." – Bill Gates

12. “A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit." - John Maxwell

13. “Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily; even if you had no title or position.” - Brian Tracy

14. "The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic." – George Orwell

15. “I start each day by telling myself what a positive influence I am on this world.” - Peter Daisyme

16. “Earn your leadership every day." - Michael Jordan

17. "Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others." – Jack Welch

18. “Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” - Peter Drucker

19. "My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better." - Steve Jobs

20. "The led must not be compelled. They must be able to choose their own leader." – Albert Einstein

21. “Great leaders find ways to connect with their people and help them fulfill their potential.” - Steven J. Stowell

22. "To have long-term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way." - Pat Riley

23. "If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk." – Benjamin Hooks

24. “The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” - Jim Rohn

25. "A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd." - Max Lucado

26. “To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

27. "It is absolutely necessary...for me to have persons that can think for me, as well as execute orders." - George Washington

28. "Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work." - Vince Lombardi

29. “A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.”  - Stephen King

30. "A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason."- J.P. Morgan

31. “Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow.” - Chinese Proverb

32. "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

33. “No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.”  - Andrew Carnegie

34. "Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar." - Orrin Woodward

35. "Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob." – Oscar Wilde

36. “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.” - Sam Walton

37. “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.” -  Albert Schweitzer

38. “If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.” - Dolly Parton

39. “I am reminded how hollow the label of leadership sometimes is and how heroic followership can be.” - Warren Bennis

40. “In this world a man must either be an anvil or hammer.” -  Henry W. Longfellow

41. “It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. (Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.)” - Latin Proverb

42. “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” -  Thomas Carlyle

43. “A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.” - Ovid

44. “You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader” - Henry Ford

45. “Rely on your own strength of body and soul. Take for your star self-reliance, faith, honesty, and industry. Don't take too much advice — keep at the helm and steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. Fire above the mark you intend to hit. Energy, invincible determination with the right motive, are the levers that move the world.” - Noah Porter

46. "Don't blow off another's candle for it won't make yours shine brighter." Jaachynma N.E. Agu

47. “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.”  - Herbert Swope

48. “He who has learned how to obey will know how to command.”  - Solon

49. “If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.” - Maya Angelou

50. “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” - Theodore Roosevelt

Bonus:

“Screw it, let’s just do it.” - Richard Branson

Seedcamp Blog Post #1: How To Simplify Your Client On-Boarding Process

Just did the first of many guest post I will be doing for Seedcamp's blog. Wrote on How To Simplify Your Client On-Boarding Process through a very practical approach and some basic tools. If you're involved in a startup that sells enterprise SaaS solutions and has a client on boarding process that seems complex or not even structured, this blog post will give you some ideas on simplifying things a bit. About Seedcamp: Seedcamp is a new kind of fund, supporting startups from the pre-seed and seed stage. We back ambitious founders from around the world and help them build billion dollar global companies by providing them the right access at the right time to Learning, Network, and Capital. We invest initially from $0-$250K and accelerate them across the P/M fit, traction, growth, and scale stages from seed funding to IPO.

Eventful Travel To My First Indian Wedding

It all started with an invite from my dear friend and business partner Aman Kumar Jain, to his wedding back in March of 2014. I have known and worked with Aman for over 6 years, and I wasn’t going to miss this important moment in his life, so I knew I had to make the journey. Just two weeks before the wedding, I was in Brazil supporting my Seleccion Colombia, at the World Cup with my Father and Brother in Law. We cut the trip short, as I had to be present for the grand day.  As I sat in the car speeding down the roads of India, rushing to make the wedding in Purulia, I deiced to start writing this post as a distraction to the near collisions on every kilometer traveled.

The original plan was for me to ride in a train along with many of Aman’s friends also headed to Purulia from Kolkata, but that didn’t work out given a delayed bag. Thank you KLM Airlines, and the gift we decided to get Aman and Ashika.

Here are the details:

June 30th US Time

I arrived at the Salt Lake International Airport excited as hell for the trip. After all, I was traveling to two new places in India I had never been to before, (Kolkata and Purulia) and was about to experience my first Indian wedding.

Delta App Update: Flight to Atlanta has been delayed.

I never check bags, as it gives me more flexibility in my travels and gets me in and out of airports faster, so keeping with usual practices, I make my way through security with my roller bag and a bag containing the gift for the wedding, a very beautiful cake serving set from Tiffany & Co. that my lovely wife had bought on behalf of our family. With as much as I travel, and all the travel scars I have, I got the security thing down and 'USUALLY'  fly through security, but not this time!

I got pulled to the side and asked to remove the gift box from my bag. As we opened the beautifully tied bow on the Tiffany & Co box, I realized that our gift has a knife in it. Shit! Why the heck did I not realize this sooner? I had to do what I never do; check my freaking bag!

After going through security; upset about having to check my bag, I approached the Delta counter to express my concern about the tight connection in Atlanta and not being able to make my connection to Amsterdam. The lady at the counter was freaking AMAZING, in a matter of minutes she had pulled my bag off the flight to Atlanta, booked me on a new flight through Minneapolis that would get me on the Amsterdam flight in time for my connection to Dehli.

July 2nd India Time

Flight arrived in Dehli on time and without any issues, until I reached the baggage claim section. All the bags had been pulled off the carrousel and none of the bags lying around the carousel were mine. Shit dude, what I feared the most (loosing my checked bag), was just happening.

I look towards the baggage claim counter and there is a line; wait a minute, not a line, a MOB of people hovering over the 3 representatives at the counter. People were yelling, some were crying about their bags. It was a mess! After not getting anywhere by making a line, I decided to move my cultural dial to Indian mode and I just forced my way to the front of the mob to start my baggage claim process. I was given a blank form to fill out with the details of my bag. After filing out this form, I had to fight my way back to the front of the mob, so I could turn in the form. The girl behind the counter took my form, transferred it MANUALLY, to a new form and handed it back to me as she pointed to a counter across the way; also packed with people. I had to go there to get the form stamped by customs and then bring it back.

After fighting the mob of people in the customs area, I made my way back to fight the mob of people in the bag claim area. I fought my way back to the counter, turned in the form and got back a copy of the form with a “sorry sir for the inconvenience, your bag SHOULD come in on tomorrows flight from Amsterdam”. I was like, fuck man this sucks! I had a flight in a few hours to Kolkata, where I had a hotel to shower up and sleep for several hours in preparation for a train ride to Purilia that evening. I obviously had to scratch that, as my bag was not even going to be in Dehli, not even Kolkata until the next day.

I had no other choice but to wait for the bag in Kolkata as getting a bag to Purulia would be nearly impossible. KLM told me the bag would be at the Kolkata airport for pick up the morning of the 3rd of July.

July 3rd India Time

I wake up to start dialing the Dehli KLM office for a status on my bag. I was confident my bag would be there, but to my freaking surprise, these peeps from KLM Dehli failed to throw my bag on the first flight to Kolkata on a local airline, and now they were telling me it would need to wait for an 8pm flight! I was cursing the gift, and my wife’s decision to buy this gift, which was the cause of this mess! I finally got through a manager, from whom I demanded a solution from. They had delayed my bag already once which caused me to miss one day of events.

At this point, I was like, ok, I need to go to a plan B, as I may not even get my bag at all, and I am not missing the wedding ceremony on the 4th. I took a cab to the local mall to look for clothes, as the sweats, t-shirt and tennis shoes  I had on was definitely not appropriate for a wedding. I went to many shops and none of them had any clothes that would fit this 6.3’ frame. I came back to my hotel empty handed with hopes that KLM had figured something out.

The concierge at the hotel had an update for me; KLM did find an earlier flight to Kolkata that would arrive 6pm vs. the 11pm arrival they had originally proposed. I was like, Ok, that will work.  I thought; once the bag arrives, I will take a car to Purilia to hopefully catch the tail end of the first day of events and be there in time for the wedding ceremony on the 4th.

My bag arrived at the hotel around 7:30pm. Yahoooooo!

In India, most of the better hotels have a security checkpoint in their entrance, much like those at the airports, where they run your bags through the scanner. My phone rings in my room and it’s the hotel security telling me they ran my bag through the scanner and they have found knives in my bag! At this point, I had forgot about the gift that had me in this situation to start with ☺ The gentleman at security was like “Sir, we will need to hold these at the front desk until you check out tomorrow.” 

After two agonizing days 2 days of waiting, I changed my clothes and was on my way out the door when I got a WhatsApp message from my friend Dnaynesh telling me I should NOT travel this late as there would be risk of encountering Naxalite Rebels on the road. I was like, fuck it, I will take the risk, after all I have a set of very fine Tiffany & Co. knives I could use to defend myself ☺.

After giving it a second thought, I decided not to risk it, so I planned to leave the next day at 4am.

July 4th India Time

Wedding day! I have my bag and I am ready to go. The guys at the Lalit Grand Eastern Hotel are amazing, they gave me a wake up call followed by a cup of morning tea and the car ready to go. We started our drive around 4:30am with what we believed would be enough time to get to Purulia by 10am, just in time for the wedding at Noon.

The first 200 kilometers were quite the breeze with great scenery and lots of honking on the way ;). The planned for 4.5 hours to travel the full 300 kilometers (186 miles).

We hit a small town called Bankura and in retrospect, this is where the trip turned to hell and where the kilometers more than tripled in time! In Bankura we took the wrong turn, we went down a road that also led us to Purulia, but through roads where it seemed like land minds had gone off. All of this while it poured rain! What was supposed to be a 4.5 hour drive turned into and 8 hour drive and a race to the finish line in order to make the wedding ceremony.

When I finally arrived, I rushed out of the car and up to my hotel room to get dressed for the event. After the longest 300 kilometers ever traveled, I had SAFELY arrived and on my way to the wedding. Thankfully for me, Indian weddings have quite a bit of rituals and I arrived just in time for the procession (Baarat), where friends and family of the groom gather and dance to a live band.

I will write about the wedding experience on a separate post, but I had to get this travel experience off my chest ;)

चियर्स (Cheers)

Build Something Big

Back in my days at Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne and I would spend hours hanging together, I learned so much from this guy on business, life, and creatively solving the world’s problems. While Patrick and I were developing this cool friendship, I was having some incredible business successes following some of his teachings, which he learned from the days he spent as a child with Warren Buffet. There was, however, always some tick in the back of my thoughts to kick ass in my own start up. It’s in my genes. I attempted several times to leave but was held back over and over again by more compelling offers within Overstock. My career and capabilities were growing, and so was the money and prestige. All of this, on top of my loyalty to Patrick, kept me there for longer than I originally thought, but it was all worth it when in 2007, I took the leap and started CommerceInterface.

My wife and I had been working on growing a small portfolio of properties in Salt Lake City, UT in an area that was booming. We had 6 apartment units that we rented out. The way we got started was we bought two units, lived in one and rented out the other.

I remember the first one… the place was a dump. Friends would come over and they would say, "Oh, my God, Ivan, why the hell did you buy this place, why the hell are you living here?" This place was in Salt Lake City on 9th and 9th. "This neighborhood is really bad."

We kind of looked at each other knowing better; this neighborhood was on the up and up, it was going places and we're going to make this place look really nice. We spent 2 years remodeling it ourselves, and not being very handy, you can only imagine the quality of the work. It looked really nice in the end after getting my work fixed by some very handy people. We ended up keeping that place and buying a few more.

I didn’t want to pay a company to property manage for me, but when the calls would come in for me to go out and fix something, all I could think about was how much I needed to get out of this business. I really suck at fixing things that make a house work, like when the sink breaks and I flood the kitchen. Yeah, that bad.

During that time, I had this grandiose view that I would buy hundreds of these units, though, and I was just going to become this real estate mogul. This was a great growth phase and even though I really cannot say it would never happen, I may never be a huge real estate mogul, but if I do decide to take that path one day, I will be smarter about the business so I can have all the right people in place to succeed. Some properties I lost money on, some I made really good money on.

In 2007, after selling the properties at the height of the Real Estate Boom, I took that cash as started CommerceInterface.

With $85,000 dedicated to CI, and my wife with enough to live off of for 1 1/2 years (cause I wasn't going to be paying myself for the first year and a half), I finally had my dream. I was officially a business owner. The first year in CommerceInterface was good for business. Then in 2008, the US went through a huge financial crisis. Starting a company during that time had some positives, but had a lot of negatives... people were very cautious about investing into their businesses and we were selling those kinds of business services.

After we recovered from the economic instability, we began enjoying a newly established technology platform which took us to servicing 9 of the major retailers in the country, several hundred clients processing hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions. That’s about the time we landed Groupon as a customer and began servicing them. It wasn’t long before an irresistible offer came through and we got acquired by them.

I always had this vision I wanted to build something big. Having a great career at Overstock, to Real Estate successes, to some tumultuous years starting CommerceInterface, I never gave up on my hope to build a big company.

In good cash flow years, I would take money and throw it into other businesses, always in the hopes of creating this group, this conglomerate of companies that I could have people run. And I would support  them, make sure things were going well and continue to build more and more successful companies.

Now, I have a different thought on that. You’ve almost got to be crazy to think like I thought, but I couldn’t have anticipated it, I had to walk through it. Start-ups take a lot of hard work, dedication, and enthusiasm and you need to stay very focused. Mistakes are easy to make in those early years of a business, and in the years at CommerceInterface, certain things happened and we suffered the consequences of not having me, the founder, completely focused on the vision, driving the functionality of the technology.

Pay Yourself Last

Getting a business off the ground and selling your products is the easy part... keeping that momentum and growing your presence in the market to keep your products and services flying off the shelves for years to come (remember that entrepreneurs dream??:), while scaling, is much more difficult. Maintenance for long term profitability of a business is very difficult and requires a certain level of discipline; stay grounded when it comes to your finances. In my years of business and ventures, watching businesses come and go, a lack of staying on top of key financial metrics is the one thing that kills most businesses. Being able to manage your finances- payroll, vendors and supplies, inventory, etc.- is a difficult part in any business for someone who has never done it. Many people are just not cut out for this, but as an owner, you gotta learn it.

Here are some of the basics. Handle them, stay focused on the bottom line and watch your business grow.

Employees & Payroll

Don't pay yourself much, if anything, the first one to two years in your business... I've seen first hand, businesses that go down because the owners start paying themselves way too much. Employees are the most important part of growth and scalability, and you want to take good care of them.

Pay your employees first.

This is contrary to what we learn from leading finance or wealth building gurus or seminars out there. These pros say, "you pay yourself first." That's bull shit, you pay your employees first. As an entrepreneur, your payout is long term.

In all the years that I have been in business, I have never missed a single payroll, even when things were tough. I can't stand it when I hear things like, "My boss gave me a check that I can't cash till next week." Big no-no in my book.

I've heard stories of businesses going under because they didn't have enough money to pay payroll taxes. To me, that's poor management. You've got payroll and every two weeks you know you have to cut checks to your employees. Then you have to pay your payroll taxes, and depending on your payroll amounts, they may be monthly , quarterly or yearly; whatever your situation may be.

What should you do? Open Two Accounts- one for business and one for payroll.

Let's say you have a bi-weekly payroll expense of $10,000, with an additional $2,500 in taxes, put the full $12,500 and deposit it into your payroll account, and forget about it. Yes, I know that you may not have to pay your taxes until later in the year, but ultimately, this is a payroll expense and you owe it. So many people get into trouble with this... and I'm even referring to large companies with several hundred thousands of payroll taxes they couldn't pay. This went on for several quarters, and they had to close their doors because they couldn't catch up. Don’t be that guy.

When to Start Paying Yourself

When you start having a little bit of success, you can start to take a salary and/or increase your pay. Stay away from the mentality of spending a little bit lavishly, thinking that things will always be on the up and up is not guaranteed. Be patient with yourself, a day will come in your business where you’re making a decent profit and you will be able to rake in the benefits for your efforts.

Capitalize Your Business

Something very important that people don't realize is that you have to capitalize the business.

Throw money in the bank!

It's great to have the capital there so you have the option to take on big exciting opportunities, even acquire other businesses that will help strengthen your business, or simply help you through hard times.

Track Your Performance

I run across people in my life who don't even know how to balance a checkbook. How are these individuals expected to run a P&L or a Balance Sheet for their business and know what to do with it? Listen, this may be a surprise to many of you, but I have seen people at large corporations that don't have an idea of how to read a P&L or how to properly calculate gross profits for their business. It's a shame, but it's a reality.

Schools need to do a better job of educating our children on how to balance a checkbook, how to manage personal finances. Teach them what a P&L and a balance sheet are. Teach them the basics on how to manage personal and business finances. Until that happens, it is up to you to learn. You will find people that are amazing sales people, technologist, and amazing operators, but they will forget about the most important vital sign of a business, your finances.

Finances in your business is like the blood that courses through your veins. If you don’t know the financial status of your business, you will F-N die. Pay close attention to those dollars, make sure there is a healthy flow, and you will have a thriving, profitable business. And remember, pay your self last!