Top 10 Business Quotes of 2010

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We all know business people love to talk. And in 2010, we at BusinessNewsDaily kept our ears and notebooks open to capture every sound bite.

Since August — when our publication officially launched — we’ve heard an earful in interviews with well-known people in the business and political worlds as well as social-media aficionados, experts in other industries, seasoned business owners and young entrepreneurs still going through puberty.

Here are the 10 funniest or most insightful things we overheard this year:

10. “If you're the CEO of a company, you have to work your bloody ass off. And if you're the CEO of two companies, you have to work two bloody asses off, and you don’t have two asses. And then if you combine that with a terrible economy, that just makes the job even harder, it's been a really grueling several years.”
— Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, in August: Entrepreneur Elon Musk On Weathering the CEO Storm

9. “We’re ramen profitable.”
— Jessica Mah (pictured), CEO of InDinero, in October: Capital idea: Entrepreneur’s Tool Helps Firms Manage Finances

8.“The unifying force driving businesses to Twitter today is a simple concept: Consumers don’t like being ignored and businesses know they need to listen.”
— Ben Grossman, communication strategist, of the marketing agency Oxford Communications, in November: Tweet, Tweet: 9 Steps to a Successful Twitter Strategy

7. “Bottom line: If you don’t make money, you’re not a real entrepreneur—so put up or shut up.”
— Scott Gerber (pictured), serial entrepreneur and syndicated small-business columnist, in October: 5 Questions for Scott Gerber

6. “I think successful entrepreneurs were always rock stars. The founders of the industrial revolution giants lived lavish lives, hosted the best parties and rubbed shoulders with leaders and royalty. The only difference between now and then is that the Internet era creates wealth much faster and now these entrepreneurs are often very young when they make their fortune and instead of gradually building their celebrity status like the entrepreneurs from previous generations, they become stars overnight. … Every industry that can turn a 20-something into a millionaire will create rock stars.”
— Gadi Shamia, president of Bizzy.com, in December: Are Technology Entrepreneurs The New Rock Stars?

5. “You own your gadgets. They don’t own you. They’re like newborn babies always clamoring for your attention.”
— Joanne Cantor, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in November: Too Much Technology Takes a Toll

4. “We asked small businesses what they wanted, and they all said, ‘More customers. Small business owners are survivors. We can help them.”
— Kenneth Chenault (pictured), chairman of American Express, in November: Small Business Saturday Encourages 'Shopping Small'

3. "If there's anything I've learned from my years in the tech world, it's that companies don't get killed by competition. They usually find creative ways to commit suicide."
—Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho, in August: The Startup That Took on Google and Microsoft

2. “In this country, it has traditionally been unacceptable to have a segment of the population that perpetually lives in poverty. That is because we haven’t tolerated it. This recession is not an ordinary dip in the economy that is occurring. The road we come back on is going to be very different. Right now there is a lot of appropriate concern that high unemployment is not acceptable. However the longer it lasts, the more people become resigned to fact that a certain segment of the population will stay unemployed. That is the way much of the rest of the world thinks, but that’s not the way Americans traditionally think.”
— George Muñoz (pictured), former chief financial officer and assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton, in August: How to Revive the American Dream

1. “(Marijuana) is a medicine. And the industry needs to act more like the pharmaceutical industry in the way it presents itself. This is not a Cheech and Chong movie.”
— Elizabeth Robinson, (pictured) owner of medical marijuana-marketing firm Grow Room Communications, in December: You Do What?!? 5 Businesses You Didn’t Know Were Legal

 

Reach BusinessNewsDaily staff writer Brian Anthony Hernandez at Bhernandez@TechMediaNetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter (@BAHjournalist) and become his friend on Facebook (BAH Journalist) to stay updated on news about small businesses, technology, social media, consumer trends and workplace behavior.

LOOKING AHEAD TO 2011:

• 84% of Employees Want to Quit Their Jobs in 2011
• 5 Technologies That Just Might Be Extinct By the End of 2011
• 50 Big Ideas, Predictions and Trends for 2011 and Beyond
• 2011 Employment Outlook: More Jobs, Hiring and Raises
• 11 Issues Small Business Will Be Forced to Grapple With in 2011