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Robert Johnson Quotes

Article Overview: Robert Johnson Quotes

Robert Johnson Quotes

We sort of lived paycheck to paycheck, like a lot of African-American families do, still do.

We weren't a welfare family, but we knew that if I wanted a bicycle it meant that somebody else wasn't going to get something else. Or if you wanted to go to college, you knew your parents couldn't pay your way to college.

I failed miserably. I couldn’t get up in the morning. Still can’t.

I knew that if we had a box of cookies in the house, you made sure you got yours fast. It made you make decisions quick…If you talk to anyone from a large family, the tendency is you want to chart your own course, because otherwise how would you get recognized?

I said, hmmm, let me see that. So I looked at it, and I said, wherever he had elderly I crossed out and put black people. Black people are a certain demographic, black people are poorly depicted on television, so on, and so forth.

It doesn't sound like a lot, but to me, from a family of ten, a half million dollars was probably more money than I'd seen in the whole town where I grew up, in terms of the whole black population probably didn't have a half million dollars in net worth.

BET was a business opportunity waiting for someone to put it together.

Being an African American who succeeds at the highest level, since nobody expects minorities to be there.

Fortunately I was able to pay the price. I mean, the NBA did not write me an affirmative action check and say, ‘Bob, if you show up with half the money that the team is worth, we'll give it to you.’ This was because fortunately I had the money to do it.

When an African-American attains a level of success, he or she becomes the primary go-to person for any other business deal. The broader community does not look for anybody else. They say, I've got my Bob Johnson, I've got my Oprah. And that's it. And it just stops.

What I try to do as I'm going up the trail, I try to bring with me other African-Americans who can then use my experience and gain credibility from what I've done to be their own successful person.

Today, if I were to put on jeans and walk into a jewelry store, and I could probably buy the jewelry store ten times over, but the jeweler's going to look at me as a black guy in jeans who probably can't afford it, and maybe who just maybe might steal something.

We’re not reinventing the wheel, we’re just painting it black.

Anything that has to do with money, I want to be in that business.

If there’s something I can do and I feel it should be done, I just want to do it. I just don’t want to leave it undone because I’ll sit back and say, why didn’t I do that? Why didn’t I start that business?

The failure of any community to avail itself of the resources of the Internet will limit its ability to succeed. BET is bringing its media channels, content and brand resources together with those of our partners to create an online destination that will educate, enrich, empower, and entertain African-Americans.

We are going to brand the Internet, much the way we branded cable some 16 years ago.

I’m in business to make money. You can do well and do good. But at first, you have to focus on the blocking and tackling of running a good business.

BET was never a legacy event for me. BET was something I started as an investment and I knew someday I would sell it.

Whenever I see an opportunity and a chance to change something, I go at it and I lay out all the facts to everybody…And when I come to this space, I'm going to come with talent, I'm going to come with focus. And I'm going to do the job as competitively as the next guy.

I make too much money to be a front man.

We are the only black network in town, so everybody has poured their burdens and obligations on BET, but we can’t solve everybody’s desires for BET. We have to be focused on running this as a profit maximization business.

I never really embraced the notion that BET was an heirloom that belonged to the greater black society. BET was a business that had a great impact on African American society, but it didn’t belong to it. And so, my thing is that we want to contribute, we want to add value. But we have to operate according to the philosophy that you have to exist in a world where business decisions have to be made based on business, not on political notions or social agendas.

A lot of people wanted BET to be everything to everybody. So the educational community wanted us to be an educational channel. In fact, for a long time people would call BET black educational television because they just insisted if you're going to do anything black, it had to be in education.

You've done it for 25 years, there's not much more you can do.

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Article Tags: affirmative action, african american families, bet, bicycle, bob johnson, broader community, business deal, business opportunity, decisions, gain credibility, million dollars, minorities, nba, oprah, parents, paycheck to paycheck, population, television, tendency, welfare



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What do you need - To have a business - you need something to sell that somone will buy. If you have an idea or way to solve a problem then you will need to: -determine if it is feasable - decide pon your approach - identify the resources you will need - gather the resources - begin the journey I realize this is an over simplification but my message is this - Starting a business is like building a house in this regard- if you do things in the right sequence it will be easier and less costly. I will add that starting and building a business can be hard work -so haning a passion for what you are doing plus a dedication to its success are pretty much essential. And don't be afraid to seek help. Robert Johnson
Promoting Software On A Shoestring Budget - Once again, great comments enlivener! Boomer - my first company, Redasoft, was a biotech software company. We started with nothing and built it up to have clients in over 30 countries including NASA, Johnson & Johnson, etc so it is possible! SEO is a great option for you as it's cheap and can bring highly targeted people to your site. You should also look at print media. We've found that it works much better than tv or radio. We had the major scientific journals like Science review our software and it led to a lot of sales and traffic because our clients read those publications. If you sell one reporter on the idea of doing a review, they'll do the work of selling to 1000's of potential clients for you so it's a great ROI (as long as your product works!)
Re: Quote of the Day - John Johnson - Glad you enjoyed Mal! I actually did not know about Johnson until we did the profile but it is a great story!
Facebook application - Hi Kevin - thanks for the suggestion! The two that we were thinking of were Famous Entrepreneur Quotes and Which famous entrepreneur am I most like? I like your idea as well. We've got a rollout schedule of new features for the site that we are working on first before we can get to the Facebook app. We're also not sure how hard it is to integrate into Facebook. It looks like there is a php way to do it which is great because that is our core competency.
Facebook applications - ....[quote:36s714h1]The two that we were thinking of were Famous Entrepreneur Quotes and Which famous entrepreneur am I most like? [/quote:36s714h1] So far my own foray into Facebook has been a complete bust, though I expected that from the start. But if I do an Application for my own particular field of interest, such as Your Favorite Sci Fi movie...that might get people going. So Evan when you figure out how to do this please let me know how complicated it is!!


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