Daymond John Quotes

For me, the winning strategy in any start-up business is, 'Think big but start small.'

Most people end up owning a business by accident. Therefore, they don't usually have a thought process and a strategic plan in place.

It's an error in judgment to bounce into starting a small business before you cash in on building a strong foundation.

Good decisions can have bad short-term outcomes but be great for the business long-term.

When I hear people debate the ROI of social media? It makes me remember why so many business fail. Most businesses are not playing the marathon. They're playing the sprint. They're not worried about lifetime value and retention. They're worried about short-term goals.

Small businesses, you can give them capital, but what they often need as much is mentoring, advice and help with their business plan.

Companies that grow for the sake of growth or that expand into areas outside their core business strategy often stumble. On the other hand, companies that build scale for the benefit of their customers and shareholders more often succeed over time.

Many businesses fail because the owner wasn't willing to invest and wasn't educated on the difference between spending money frivolously and investing money into the business for growth, and the risks and rewards of that cash infusion.

When I first got into business, I made a lot of bad decisions.

We're certainly interested in maximizing our return and doing it - we're interested in maximizing our return, but we're also interested in doing it over a long period of time and in doing it in a way that never endangers the firm from a survivability standpoint.

It's a really paradoxical thing. We want to think big, but start small. And then scale fast. People think about trying to build the next Facebook as trying to start where Facebook is today, as a major global presence.

Our ultimate goal is to stay in business. We are not here with a specific plan. That's kind of how our entire career has evolved. We will figure things out as we go along.

For the last five years I've been in the production business.

For a startup, you need to stay small so the others don't attack, or you aim to be one of the big guys. If you don't do it right, you might lose everything.

If you're successful and growing, you can manage any way you want to. Growth makes so many dimensions of management easier. It's when growth stops that things get tough.

I don't think you should ever start a business and move in a direction where you can't see it becoming a business.

I'm not somebody who is going to build something for a few years, sell it, and then go off and just have fun.

Like any small business owner, I experienced the pressures of building a company from the ground up - developing a business plan, balancing the books, meeting payroll and building a customer base.

Successful enterprises are built from the ground up. You can't assemble them with a bunch of acquisitions.

If you look at space companies, they've failed either because they've had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.

In our experience, what we have found is the rare commodity is a good management team. And good management teams manage through good and bad cycles and manage to grow their business over a long period of time.

We need to be focused in corporate America on the long term.

Your own business growth and success depends on many things, and along that growing path, you are going to have to concede certain responsibilities and activities - whether for your accounting, your production, or day-to-day management.

There are new challenges every day when starting a business and growing a brand, but I'm fortunate to have an amazing team that is always willing to work hard and navigate through whatever obstacle comes our way.

I'd love to see more businesses take this approach - intentionally rightsizing themselves. Hit a number that feels good and say, 'Let's stick around here.'