Tweet

Charles Schwab Quotes

Article Overview: Charles Schwab Quotes

Charles Schwab Quotes

I did as much as I could: raising chickens, pushing an ice-cream cart, bagging walnuts, driving a tractor on a beet farm, working on the railroad. I think this eclectic career helped me a lot in life.

I bluffed my way through much of it, I’m sure. Fortunately, I have a pretty ‘up’ personality, and that helped me all the way through. I tried hard and I had pretty good communication skills, so I could persuade my teachers that I was a pretty good kid.

To sit down with a blank piece of paper and write was the most traumatic thing that had ever faced me in life. I had ideas in my head, but I could not get the stuff down. It was a crushing time.

I never perceived of myself as stupid; I can’t explain why. I just thought that if I worked harder, maybe something would happen.

We brought prices down, down, down so they are now essentially commodities. So if we want to succeed in this business, we have to move in a direction of adding other value to the relationship with our clients. And so where I might have said 15 years ago, 'We want to be the best discount brokerage,' today I want to be the best 'relationship company' in financial services.

I think we could double the company pretty easily in that time frame.

You've got to understand that markets go both ways, up and down. Over longer periods, stocks generally have always gone up. But any specific stock may never come back.

Buy an individual stock and you never know. You could go to zero.

When celebration of noble failure becomes institutionalized, people within the organization are more willing to reassess earlier decisions.

I’m sure luck helps every successful entrepreneur. But it doesn’t come [without] a lot of preparation and hard work.

We get emotional and do dumb things.

I can't overemphasize that we have the right kind of client-relationship people who really have the interests of the client at hand first – not second, but first. We are willing to risk short-term revenue to do the right thing for the customer and ensure long-term success.

Fundamentally, to help a lot of people. That really means making sure our clients have a sense that they are financially fit.

We think we have a superior value, and we’d put that value up against any of the traditional firms. Even against the so-called discount firms. We want to be a superior value against any other financial service company, that's our ambition. And we maybe are not there in every component, but we're pretty close.

Every company, a mature company, can look at their costs and redundancies. It's natural for every company that's successful to build up infrastructures that are inefficient. We're all human, we all do that. So that is number one. And you want to take whatever savings you can out of that and figure out how to get it back to your loyal clients. They will reward you with additional business, even if you mess things up.

The value proposition is front and center to us. We've taken out the account fees, the minimums – all these things we've done the past couple of years have been very dramatic.

At the end of every day, having a clientele that speaks well of you, that’s the largest source of business. I don't care what kind of business you're in. Clients referring us to their friends or relatives is so much more powerful than any advertising we could ever do.

Our organization just has to outfox our larger competitors by really emphasizing our value proposition, which is really outstanding compared to them. The good news is we are a highly flexible organization. We have a national footprint, we have low costs, we're efficient, so we can compete at this point with almost anybody and do a great job for our clients.

Will we own the technology?

You’ve got to start with your gut, with something you are really passionate about, for a good reason. You won’t get there by sitting in a closet and thinking, ‘Boy I know the world must want this.’

When I read, I can feel myself converting the written code into sounds before I can process it. Fast readers don't go through all that.

It's painful to think about it. You don't like to go back and review the pain. I don't think 20 years ago I would have talked about this. But someone's got to do it, and I felt sufficiently secure that I could.

Along the way, I’ve frustrated some of my associates because I could see the end zone of a particular thing quicker than they could, so I was moving ahead to conclusions. I go straight from step A to Z, and say: ‘This is the outcome. I can see it.’

When I started in this business, it was pretty crude to say the least. I had little or no resources. I have one favorite example of a guy who came in to complain about something. He was from Chicago and had an accounting background. And I said, well, if you’re so damn smart, come out of accounting and start working here. So he came around and started helping me out. It was very difficult. We were mavericks at best.

I took anybody. They were a full collection of people. They took risks in their careers. Some were misfits at other places. I took a lot of misfits in. There were some strange people. Anybody who was a reasonable person and communicated well, I hired. I was one of the first businesses to hire women.

The fact that I was out here and scrambling around as a little entrepreneur with no resources was fortuitous. I wasn’t encumbered by those old guys telling me what to do.

A lot of things. But they're probably no different from when I had no money. It’s my business pursuits and my personal life, a good relationship with my wife and kids and grandkids.

My goal is, frankly, to make sure our clients have every confidence to recommend Schwab to their friends and relatives if they are thinking about a place to do their saving and investing.

I am the customer.

The nasty little secret was that I couldn't read worth a darn. In my case, I still read very slowly to this moment.

I like to think in terms of giving people an understanding of why they should have the same passion as I do – why their life has purpose working here and why they should believe as much as I believe. I want them to seek a higher level of satisfaction above just making a salary.

I feel good every day about helping people invest; helping them achieve financial independence. It’s about the American dream.

Related Articles
  Charles Schwabs Personal Life
  Why Put Off Until Tomorrow What You Can Do Today
  The Billionaire Broker: The Early Years of Charles Schwab
  Lesson #1: Smart Companies Encourage Smart Failures
  Trading Up In Life: How Schwab Sold His Way to Success

Article Tags: beet, blank piece of paper, charles schwab, client relationship, commodities, discount brokerage, dumb things, eclectic career, good communication skills, good kid, noble failure, periods, personality, piece of paper, raising chickens, relationship company, successful entrepreneur, time frame, walnuts, working on the railroad



Related Forum Posts
Re: Character Design - using it effectively in marketing - Hi, Well i think you are both right. I am 27 and I like the "Ask Chuck" commercials by Charles Schwab and I am not too excited about the esurance ones. But whether we like them or not we notice them, remember them, and are even talking about them in this forum; for those trying to learn how to build links this is the basic principal by the way. If I learned one thing from my marketing professionals in college, is that any publicity is good publicity (obviously this can be wrong). But the Aflac duck is the most annoying spokes person / animal yet it is one of the most recognizable brand. So what the professors told us that in many cases it doesn't matter what you make people remember, as long as they remember. Do you think this may be the case with character animation in marketing? How many people know eSurance as the company with the animated girl, or how many people my age are beginning to know Charles Schwab as the financial company with the animated people? What do you think? Plus, if I were to guess Charles Schwab & esurance board of executives paid millions in research they need to reach the younger audience.
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!!
Re: Favorite Christmas movies - [quote="OmnivoreInk":1rxsgr0t]I do have to say I've never liked[i:1rxsgr0t] It's A Wonderful Life[/i:1rxsgr0t]. He spends all his life having his hopes and dreams shattered, feeling miserable, and its only at the end of his life that he can look back and realize how many friends he has, etc. But that doesn't change the fact that up until that point he was miserable![/quote:1rxsgr0t] I love the sentimentality around watching that movie with your Mom! Chtistmas is made up of all those sentimental things. "It's A Wonderful Life" is all about perspective, much in the same way that Scrooge is 'realigned' in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" - which I listen to on CD every year (sometimes twice!) Happy Christmas Everyone! Regards Martin
Top 50 Entrepreneurs Ever! - And the Top 50 Entrepreneurs of all time are… (In no particular order) Hugh Hefner – Obvious. Oprah – Born to a single mother in rural Mississippi, did what she loved and never let up. Popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre. Simon Cowell – Guy made millions off Karaoke. Jenna Jameson – Worth $70 million using only what god gave her. Henry Ford – Standardized efficiency. Thomas Edison – Numerous failures on the road to success. Perseverance! Adrian Block - 1612 establish the first known brewery in the New World on the southern tip of New Amsterdam (Manhattan). I live in a city with more than 30 breweries operating in the city limits…think these guys were onto something. Hans Christiansen – Partners with Adrian Block. Adam Osborne – Creator of the 1st personal computer. Howard Hughes – Say what you want about him the man had a vision and stuck to it. Madame C.J. Walker – 1st Female African American Millionaire…and she did it in early 1900’s. Safe to say she had a lot of obstacles, but persevered and prospered. If you think you have more working against you than Madame C.J. Walker did, think again. Mary Kay Ash – The woman behind Mary Kay cosmetics. Redefined affiliate marketing. Howard Schultz – Who’s gonna’ pay $4.00 for a cup of coffee? With $2.5 billion plus in total revenue the answer at Starbuck’s is a lot! Alexander Graham Bell – Inventing the telephone in 1876 was about as wacky an idea as teleportation is today…did that stop him? King Croesus – Minted the world’s first coin in 6th century. Benjamin Franklin – Author, printer, inventor, businessman. Ray Croc – Where do you go for dinner when you spent all your money on $4.00 Starbuck’s coffee? McDonald’s! Franchising and national expansion (both stores and waistlines) would never be the same. Sam Walton – Speaking of saving money and expanding like crazy. Sam Walton found a niche and filled it, regardless of what you think of the extra traffic Wal-Mart brings to your neighborhood. Ernest Gallo – Took what was once an exclusive product and repackaged it for the masses. I was 20 years old before I knew wine came in anything but a “jug”. William Middlebrook – Giving William the nod for inventing the paper clip, although some debate remains. However, you have to include the inventor of the paper clip in this list since we’ve all said, at one time or another, “and whoever invented the paperclip is rich, and I’m still working in this crappy office!” Bill Gates – Took a risk and was a first mover in a market that exploded. Steve Jobs – Make your products easy and people will love to use them…making a dead sexy laptop doesn’t hurt either. Mayer Amschel Rothschild – Started the world’s first international bank in the mid 1700’s. What did you do today? Scrooge McDuck - Scrooge has emerged from being a mere supporting character to a major figure of the Duck universe. Parlayed early success into his own comic book series, television appearances, films, and video games. As big as David Hasselhoff in Europe, he seized opportunity when it arose. Russell Simmons – Worth $325 million, and started as a teen street hustler. A hip hop pioneer and visionary who has shaped the hip-hop scene of the early 80’s, has branched off into fashion, television and film. And I don’t care if you grew up in Brooklyn or Beverly Hills you remember “Russell Simmons Def Comedy Jam”. Ron Popeil – Net worth in excess of $100 million dollars. A consummate salesman, he had us believing we NEEDED a food dehydrator and spray paint to cover our bald spot! The Phoenicians – Inventors of the sail boat, and could be credited then with giving our early explorers the means to take over the western hemisphere. H. Ross Perot – Used a $1,000 loan from his wife in 1962 to start Electronic Data Systems. Became a billionaire as computer systems drove the need for electronic data storage. JP Morgan – How many people get credited with having saved or rescued the U.S. national economy in general—and the federal government in particular—on two separate occasions? Not many, and JP was a merger monger legend in his time. Charles Schwab – Founder and CEO of the Schwab Corporation, made having a broker cool and accessible. Worth $5.5 billion for his efforts. Larry Page – Google, need we say more? Sergey Brin - Google, need we say more? Philip Knight – In partnership with Bill Bowerman created Nike. What’s the reward for taking a product everyone uses and making it functional and fashionable? Try a net worth in excess of $9 billion dollars. George Lucas – Start with a vision, add some talent, and never waiver. Stars Wars is as well known on this planet as Coca-Cola, and Lucas is worth a cool $3.6 billion. Doctor John Pemberton – Pharmacist who in 1886 invented Coca Cola. Forced to change his formula from including wine due to prohibition his elixir with “tonic and nerve stimulant properties of the coca plant and cola nuts sweetened with sugar” became a sensation. Eberhand Anheuser- Founder of Anheuser Busch Brewing and Budweiser beer…thank you sir for the many mornings where I regretted the night before. Adolphus Busch - Founder of Anheuser Busch Brewing and Budweiser beer…bless you for allowing me to think I am funny, great looking, and a fabulous dancer for a few hours every Saturday night. Jeff Bezos – Founded Amazon.com in 1994, and wrote up the business plan for his company on a cross country drive from New York to Seattle. Was a .com entrepreneur before there was even a term for it. Thomas Kinkade - Americas most collected living artist. Marketing works people. Erno Rubik - Invented a puzzle only .000001% of the world population could solve without cheating, and sold millions! Marketing works people. Alex Tew - 21 year old entrepreneur made $1,000,000 off the “Million Dollar Homepage”. Adding him to the list to illustrate that great ideas are sometimes in plain sight. Didn’t we all think, “I wish I had thought of that”? Henry Hassenfeld - Owner of a textile plant in 1923 his company struck gold when they developed a way for kids to play doctor. The first toy the plant ever produced led the way for the likes of Mr Potato Head, GI Joe, Life, Yatzee, Candyland, and just about any other game we played as kids. Partners with his brother Helal Hassenfeld. Helal Hassenfeld - Thanks for the memories man, I still get misty eyed thinking about Cobra Comander and the words “YO Joe” will live with me forever. Rollin King - In 1965 started a regional airline serving 3 Texas cities. 40 years later Southwest Airlines has 3500 flights a day and is the number one airline in the United States and the World by number of passengers carried. Herb Kelleher - Partnered with Rollin King to start Southwest Airlines. The guy started an AIRLINE COMPANY for crying out loud, that’s ballsy. Guy Laliberte - Made the circus cool again. Founder and CEO of Canda’s Cirque du Soleil, Laliberte founded Cirque in 1984, and revolutionized the idea of what a circus could be. Cirque du Soleil has toured more than 100 cities around the world. Admiral Zheng He - Built the vaunted Treasure Fleets, comprising dozens of ships and tens of thousands of sailors, and led them in trade missions across south Asia and as far west as Africa and the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. In seven voyages from 1405 to 1433, Zheng He spread China’s goods across the world and returned with treasures for the Ming Dynasty. Andrew Carnegie - The Scottish immigrant and weaver’s son built a steel empire whose mills churned out the railroads, ships, and structures of post-Civil War America. Milton Hershey - In 1905 built the worlds largest chocolate factory. His name has become synonymous with chocolate, which Americans consume more than 11 pounds of each year. Gary Dahl - A millionaire for selling rocks, pet rocks, enough said.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

What I Really Want Is...

E Mail Marketing Campaigns

How do you keep it together on a daily basis?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.