13 Pieces of Advice for Your Business Startup from B. C. Forbes

We know the Bertie Charles Forbes (1880 – 1954) legacy simply by the name of the magazine he founded. The financial writer got his start in his home country of Scotland where he launched his career as a journalist after graduating from what is now the University of Dundee. He was a reporter and editor for newspapers in both Scotland and South Africa before immigrating to the United States in 1904 when he was 24. Once in New York City, Forbes continued in journalism and eventually landed a columnist position with Hearst as the financial editor of the morning paper. He held onto that column until 1942 while he pursued other editor positions, including of his own financial magazine startup, Forbes, in 1917.

Forbes published several books and received many honors over the years, including being recognized as “a champion for 50 years of free enterprise and good business morals.” His magazine survives today as one of the premier resources for financial and business information and rankings.

“History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.”

“The bargain that yields mutual satisfaction is the only one that is apt to be repeated.”

“Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.”

“Uncertainty hurts business. It annoys individuals.”

“Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion.”

“Madame Curie didn’t stumble upon radium by accident. She searched and experimented and sweated and suffered years before she found it. Success rarely is an accident.”

“What would you call America’s most priceless asset? Surely not its limitless natural resources, not its matchless national wealth, not its unequaled store of gold, not its giant factories, not its surpassing railroads, not its unprecedented volume of cheap power. Is not its most priceless asset the character of its people, their indomitable self-confidence, their transcendent vision, their sleepless initiative and, perhaps above all, their inherent, irrepressible optimism?”

“Remember, diamonds are only a lump of coal that stuck to their jobs.”

“A business, like an automobile, has to be driven in order to get results.”

“I have known not a few men who, after reaching the summits of business success, found themselves miserable on attaining retirement age. They were so exclusively engrossed in their day-to-day affairs that they had no time for friend-making…. They may flatter themselves that their ‘unrelaxing’ concentration on business constitutes patriotism of the highest order. They may tell themselves that the existing emergency will pass, and that they can then adopt different, more sociable, more friendly habits. [But] such a day is little likely to come for such individuals.”

“Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiseling and scraping and polishing.”

“Success is finding, or making, that position which enables you to contribute to the world the very greatest services of which you are capable, through the diligent, persevering, resolute cultivation of all the faculties God has endowed you with, and doing it all with cheerfulness, scorning to allow difficulties or defeats to drive you to pessimism or despair.”

“Few marks are made in the world’s history by eight-hour-day men.”

—B.C. Forbes, Founder of Forbes magazine