Top 90 Josh Kaufman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “When you’re feeling lost, take heart. It’s just your brain gathering the information it needs to make good decisions.”

— Josh Kaufman

2. “Improve by 1% a day, and in just 70 days, you’re twice as good.”

— Josh Kaufman

3. “Paradox of Automation: the more efficient the Automated system, the more crucial the contribution of the human operators of that system.”

— Josh Kaufman

4. “Whoever best describes the problem is the one most likely to solve it. –.”

— Josh Kaufman

5. “Business schools don’t create successful people. They simply accept them, then take credit for their success.”

— Josh Kaufman

6. “You can’t make positive discoveries that make your life better if you never try anything new.”

— Josh Kaufman

7. “Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.”

— Josh Kaufman

8. “Ending a chapter of your life on your own terms is a feat worthy of respect and admiration.”

— Josh Kaufman

9. “Don’t waste time trying to predict an unknowable future – construct the most likely scenarios and plan what you’ll do if they occur, and you’ll be prepared for whatever actually happens.”

— Josh Kaufman

10. “The best thing that can happen to a human being is to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears.”

— Josh Kaufman

11. “If you want to succeed in business in any capacity – employee, manager, or owner – you must have a solid, comprehensive understanding of what business principles actually are and how they actually work.”

— Josh Kaufman

12. “As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”

— Josh Kaufman

13. “It’s this simple: if I never try anything, I never learn anything.”

— Josh Kaufman

14. “Perceived Value determines how much your customers will be willing to pay for what you’re offering. The higher the perceived value of your offering, the more you’ll be able to charge for it, which significantly improves your chances of succeeding.”

— Josh Kaufman

15. “1. Value Creation. Discovering what people need or want, then creating it. 2. Marketing. Attracting attention and building demand for what you’ve created. 3. Sales. Turning prospective customers into paying customers. 4. Value Delivery. Giving your customers what you’ve promised and ensuring that they’re satisfied. 5. Finance. Bringing in enough money to keep going and make your effort worthwhile.”

— Josh Kaufman

16. “Experimentation is the essence of living a satisfying, productive, fulfilling life. The more you Experiment, the more you learn, and the more you’ll achieve.”

— Josh Kaufman

17. “Business schools make a fortune forcing their students to take in a HUGE amount of information. The majority of it is theoretical. The majority of that is useless.”

— Josh Kaufman

18. “1. Efficacy – How well does it work? 2. Speed – How quickly does it work? 3. Reliability – Can I depend on it to do what I want? 4. Ease of Use – How much effort does it require? 5. Flexibility – How many things does it do? 6. Status – How does this affect the way others perceive me? 7. Aesthetic Appeal – How attractive or otherwise aesthetically pleasing is it? 8. Emotion – How does it make me feel? 9. Cost – How much do I have to give up to get this?”

— Josh Kaufman

19. “Focus on Options, not issues, and you’ll be able to handle any situation life throws at you.”

— Josh Kaufman

20. “The quickest and easiest way to screw up your life is to take on too much debt.”

— Josh Kaufman

21. “Focus on creating Forms of Value that require the least end-user effort to get the best possible End Result – they will have the highest perceived value.”

— Josh Kaufman

22. “Learn everything you can from your competition, and then create something even more valuable.”

— Josh Kaufman

23. “Email is 20-30 times more effective in generating a purchase than any other tool.”

— Josh Kaufman

24. “1. Watch – What’s happening? What’s working and what’s not? 2. Ideate – What could you improve? What are your options? 3. Guess – Based on what you’ve learned so far, which of your ideas do you think will make the biggest impact? 4. Which? – Decide which change to make. 5. Act – Actually make the change. 6. Measure – What happened? Was the change positive or negative? Should you keep the change, or go back to how things were before this iteration? Iteration is a cycle –.”

— Josh Kaufman

25. “If you want an audience, start a fight. – IRISH PROVERB.”

— Josh Kaufman

26. “If you rely on finding time to do something, it will never be done. If you want to find time, you must make time.”

— Josh Kaufman

27. “The Golden Trifecta is my personal three-word summary of How to Win Friends and Influence People. If you want to make others feel Important and safe around you, always remember to treat people with appreciation, courtesy, and respect.”

— Josh Kaufman

28. “The benefit of making your offers small and Modular is that it allows you to take advantage of a strategy called Bundling. Bundling allows you to repurpose value that you have already created to create even more value.”

— Josh Kaufman

29. “You’re facing a monster. Of course you “don’t feel like it.” Strap on your armor anyway.”

— Josh Kaufman

30. “Approach making changes to a complex system with extreme caution: what you get may be the opposite of what you expect.”

— Josh Kaufman

31. “Lifetime Value is the total value of a customer’s business over the lifetime of their relationship with your company.”

— Josh Kaufman

32. “Ramit Sethi recommends applying what he calls the “85% Solution.” So many people get wrapped up in making the perfect decision that they wind up overwhelming themselves and doing nothing.”

— Josh Kaufman

33. “The trouble comes when we confuse learning with skill acquisition. If you want to acquire a new skill, you must practice it in context. Learning enhances practice, but it doesn’t replace it. If performance matters, learning alone is never enough.”

— Josh Kaufman

34. “Ideas are cheap – what counts is the ability to translate an idea into reality, which is much more difficult than recognizing a good idea.”

— Josh Kaufman

35. “One of the reasons Subscriptions are so profitable is that they naturally maximize Lifetime Value.”

— Josh Kaufman

36. “The best businesses in the world are the ones that create the most value for other people. Some businesses thrive by providing a little value to many, and others focus on providing a lot of value to only a few people. Regardless, the more real value you create for other people, the better your business will be and the more prosperous you’ll become.”

— Josh Kaufman

37. “Fear of the unknown will always be with you, no matter what you do. That’s comforting in a way: if there’s nothing you can do to change it, there’s no reason to let it stop you.”

— Josh Kaufman

38. “As much as I enjoyed yoga courses, it was hard to make time for them. Generally speaking, my work arrangements were flexible, so it was mostly a psychological problem: it was hard to convince myself it was acceptable to go twist my body into knots for two hours when there was work to be done.”

— Josh Kaufman

39. “People buy because they believe they’re getting more value in the Transaction than they’re spending.”

— Josh Kaufman

40. “Every time your customers purchase from you, they’re deciding that they value what you have to offer more than they value anything else their money could buy at that moment.”

— Josh Kaufman

41. “By choosing to innovate instead of compete, Apple successfully captured a leadership share of a very competitive market.”

— Josh Kaufman

42. “Skip business school. Educate yourself.”

— Josh Kaufman

43. “It’s easy to like the idea of being the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. It’s harder to like the hours, the responsibility, and the pressure that comes with the top job. It.”

— Josh Kaufman

44. “The trick is to find an attractive market that interests you enough to keep you improving your offering every single day. Finding that market is mostly a matter of patience and active exploration.”

— Josh Kaufman

45. “At the core, all successful businesses sell some combination of money, status, power, love, knowledge, protection, pleasure, and excitement. The more clearly you articulate how your product satisfies one or more of these drives, the more attractive your offer will become.”

— Josh Kaufman

46. “Large companies move slowly. Good ideas often died on the vine because they had to be approved by too many people.”

— Josh Kaufman

47. “Market research is the business equivalent of “look before you leap.”

— Josh Kaufman

48. “As the saying goes: you can have anything you want, as long as you’re willing to pay the price.”

— Josh Kaufman

49. “Many things aren’t fun until you’re good at them. Every skill has what I call a frustration barrier, a period of time in which you’re horribly unskilled and you’re painfully aware of that fact.”

— Josh Kaufman

50. “Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff.”

— Josh Kaufman