Alexa Hirschfeld Quotes

An adaptable company is one that captures more than its fair share of new opportunities. It's always redefining its 'core business' in ways that open up new avenues for growth.

Usually, the biggest companies are not the most dynamic.

Just like any business is a living, breathing thing, an entrepreneur has to be able to adapt over time.

People with highly transferable skills may be specialists in certain areas, but they're also incredible generalists - something businesses that want to grow need.

I have a fun clause in my contract. If I'm not having fun, I can leave.

Under my contract with Capitol, I have complete freedom to do just about anything I want in my own way.

It is human nature, especially as we get older, to look for stability in our lives. But if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to fight against that somewhat, as starting a business requires movement. You cannot stay still.

The essence of good business is knowing when to step on a train and when to step off.

The key to making acquisitions is being ready because you really never know when the right big one is going to come along.

Entrepreneurs have a great ability to create change, be flexible, build companies and cultivate the kind of work environment in which they want to work.

Don't get stuck on a business plan just because it was your business plan.

I believe businesses don't grow or develop in terms of a blueprint. There is a huge element of opportunism involved.

As an entrepreneur, one of my biggest struggles is that you have to focus, but you also have to expand.

I think that size is not the key to innovation. Scale doesn't confirm an innovation advantage.

When you sign a contract you only think about staying for all of it, but that depends on many things.

There's a simple, but oft-neglected lesson here: to sustain success, you have to be willing to abandon things that are no longer successful.

The more successful the unit, the more difficult it is to make sure that the large company doesn't put the same expectations on it as it does for the rest of the company. When it's a new venture, whether it's outside or inside the business, it's a child. And you don't put a 40-pound pack on a 6-year-old's back when you take her hiking.

The idea was not to make a huge business, because the bigger you get, the more restraints I thought I might get. Number one was to do what I set out to do: make new and interesting things within the size of the business that is possible to do without restraints. The second goal was to do the business in order to achieve the first goal. That's what many people don't understand.

Where you start in the marketplace is not where you have to stay.

Launching a business is kind of like a motorboat: You can go very quickly and turn fast.

Not changing your strategy merely because you're used to the one you have now is a lousy strategy.

In the beginning of a company, there is no management and this actually works really well.

The key to growing a business is that you need to be meeting some segment of the consumer's needs. If you've got a small business and a product or service that is not popular, you simply have to change your product or service to be more popular.

One of the best attributes of human beings is that they're adaptable; one of the worst attributes of human beings is they are adaptable. They adapt and start to tolerate abuses, they adapt to being involved themselves in abuses, they adapt to adversity and they continue on.

Every founder has to delude themselves into thinking, "Yes, it's going to be big. It's going to take over the world."