65 Quotes by Alan Philips

Employees are people. Customers are people. Same for entrepreneurs, business leaders. Conclusion? Companies are created by people and run by people, to service the needs and wants of people. Despite this fairly obvious observation, we tend to manage business and personal matters differently.

The crowds aren’t coming to Sweetgreen stores and the festival simply for great salads or cool music acts. They’re coming because they buy into what Sweetgreen stands for, and because, on a deeper level, they feel a reflection of themselves in Sweet- green’s purpose—which is itself an honest manifestation of what the people behind the business believe and what they stand for.

Trusting yourself enough to go against the grain, to do some- thing that’s truly a reflection of your purpose, isn’t what we’re taught. It only comes when we’ve gained enough experience to choose our own path, trust our instincts, and create from within. That’s what it means to be an experienced creative.

Creators must deeply believe in what they’re manifesting in order for others to believe.

I am guided by the belief that everyone desires freedom, fulfillment, and success. All three come from understanding the emotional elements and transforming them into sharable creative expressions. This gives your life and business meaning.

Everything that makes a cup of Starbucks coffee worth five dollars is somehow tied to the creativity and beliefs of the Starbucks organization.

What Schrager did when he developed the lifestyle hotel was apply his creativity—through design, story- telling, and programming—to shift the customer’s perspective and produce significant value. After all, many lifestyle hotels are just underperforming hotel assets that have been repositioned using these creative elements.

in the Age of Ideas, regular people are able to harness the power of perception in the same way celebrities and big companies have for years. Whether on LinkedIn, Facebook, Ins- tagram, or personal blogs, you can influence your value by affect- ing how people perceive you. And the same way an entrepreneur can change the value of a building or event by changing people’s perception of it, you too can change people’s perception of you through authentic storytelling.

So, what is it that Rubin does? How has he helped artists make their best music for nearly forty years across such disparate genres and styles? The secret seems to be rooted in self-discovery. As Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks put it, the legendary pro- ducer “has the ability and the patience to let music be discovered, not manufactured.” In other words, to use our terminology, Rubin understands that magic needs to come from within.