“If you want to build a brand, you must focus your branding efforts on owning a word in the prospect’s mind. A word that nobody else owns.”

The Internet is the ultimate in brand-centered buying.

A laser is a weak source of energy. A laser takes [only] a few watts of energy and focuses them in a coherent stream of light.

IBM didn’t invent the computer; Sperry Rand did. But IBM was the first to build the computer position in the prospect’s mind.

It takes a mile before anything happens. And if it was a wrong turn, getting back on course takes even longer.

Strategy and timing are the Himalayas of marketing. Everything else is the Catskills.

The essence of positioning is sacrifice.

Strategy should evolve out of the mud of the marketplace, not in the antiseptic environment of an ivory tower.

Branding is simply a more efficient way to sell things.

Customers want brands that are narrow in scope and distinguishable by a single word, the shorter the better.

The Law of the Generic: One of the fastest routes to failure is giving a brand a generic name.

Marketing is not selling. Marketing is building a brand in the mind of the prospect.

It normally takes decades to build a brand because it takes decades to penetrate the gray matter in between your ears.

Successful brands get into the mind slowly. A blurb in a magazine. A mention in a newspaper. A comment from a friend. A display in a retail store.

After a slow buildup, people become convinced that they have known about the brand forever.

You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position.

What’s your brand? If you can’t answer that question about your own brand in two or three words, your brand’s in trouble.

I’m a Buffalo wing magnet, a sandwich fanatic, a cheesesteak guy. But I’ll only get a cheesesteak in Philadelphia. No one else does it right.

My style of comedy is more self-deprecating. I think that makes me more relatable. When you deal with ‘topics’ – race, white versus black – you’re not separating from the pack. You’re doing what everybody else is doing.

The day you stop doing the small things is the day you think you’re above everybody else.

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.

There won’t be any hearsay. There won’t be any expert analysis from anybody else. It will be the real deal.

I want to be respected as a guy who knows what he’s talking about. And that, to me, holds more weight than anything else.

I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.