Quotes to keep you going
Looking for work is hard, and so are night shifts, long runs and the tenth application with no reply. These are lines that have kept other people going, each with a thought about work of our own.
We say who really said each one. Many famous quotes were never said by the person on the poster, so where the credit is uncertain we tell you. Every card is ours to share: press it, save it, post it.
“You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”
Often attributed to Zig Ziglar. John C. Maxwell and many others credit Zig Ziglar; it is also credited to Les Brown, and we could not find the first time it was said.
The first application, the first shift, the first advert: none of them has to be perfect. It has to be sent.
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“You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”
Zig Ziglar
It is the whole idea of a good agency and a good job board: get the worker the job and the employer the worker, and the business follows.
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“Eat that frog.”
Brian Tracy, the title of his book Eat That Frog! (2001). Tracy's advice: do the hardest task of the day first. He credits the frog to Mark Twain, but there is no record Twain said it; the idea goes back to the French writer Nicolas Chamfort in the 1700s.
Ring the employer you are nervous about first thing in the morning. The rest of the day is easier.
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“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.”
Jim Rohn
The goal is the new job. The discipline is the CV updated tonight and the three applications sent before the shift.
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“Either you run the day, or the day runs you.”
Jim Rohn
Plan tomorrow's route, bag and break tonight. A calm morning is half a good shift.
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“Work hard. Have fun. Make history.”
Amazon's early motto, from Jeff Bezos's first years. Printed on the company's early materials and repeated by Bezos in letters and talks.
Three honest lines for any shift: do the job properly, enjoy the people you do it with, and build something you can point at.
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“You got a dream, you gotta protect it.”
Chris Gardner, as played by Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness (2006). A line from the film, based on the true story of a man who went from homelessness to his own firm.
People will tell you it cannot be done, usually the ones who never tried. Keep going.
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“You don't build a great life by accident. You build it by the choices you make every day.”
Often shared as Jim Rohn's. Passed round widely under his name in this wording; we have not found it in his books or talks, though the idea is his throughout.
Tonight: the CV, the alarm, the packed lunch. Tomorrow is built out of small choices like those.
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“If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don't let some idiot talk you out of it.”
Stan Lee, as widely quoted. Repeated in his name everywhere since his death in 2018; we have not found the interview it first came from.
Every new business, every change of trade, every first application gets its doubters. Listen to advice. Not to sneering.
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“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Laozi, Tao Te Ching, chapter 64. An English rendering; the original line is closer to "a journey of a thousand li starts beneath one's feet".
Every driver knows it: the long run starts with the walk round the vehicle.
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“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
Theodore Roosevelt, Labor Day address, 1903
Pay matters, and every advert here shows it. So does doing a job you can be proud of at the end of the shift.
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“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
Squire Bill Widener, quoted by Theodore Roosevelt in his autobiography (1913). Usually credited to Roosevelt himself; he said he was quoting a neighbour.
No degree, no car, no experience yet? Start with the jobs you can reach and the skills you already have.
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“Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.”
Thomas Edison. He gave versions of this line in interviews from around 1900, with the numbers changing a little each time.
Nobody is handed a good reference. It is built one reliable shift at a time.
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“Fall seven times, stand up eight.”
Japanese proverb
Ten applications and no reply is not the end. Look at the CV again, and send the eleventh.
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“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”
Attributed to Robert Collier
Turning up on time, every time, is the small effort that every employer notices.
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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (1926). Durant's summary of Aristotle, and very often wrongly quoted as Aristotle's own words.
Checking the load twice, every time, is what a good warehouse is built on.
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“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right.”
Attributed to Henry Ford. Printed as Ford's in 1947; there is no earlier record of him saying it.
Apply for the job you are nearly ready for. Employers train people who show up willing.
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“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.”
Tim Notke, a high school basketball coach. Made famous by others who repeated it; the line is his.
The most experienced person on the team is not always the one who gets kept on.
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“Well begun is half done.”
A proverb usually traced to Aristotle's Politics. Mary Poppins made it famous in English; the idea is Greek.
A clean CV and a clear first message do half the work of getting the interview.
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“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Night shifts, early starts, long runs. They are hard, and they are how a lot of people build a life.
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For team leaders, shift managers and supervisors
People leave the person running their shift more often than they leave the job. A diploma makes a manager; how the shift feels makes a leader. A few lines worth keeping by the clocking-in machine.
“The servant-leader is servant first.”
Robert K. Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader (1970). Greenleaf coined the idea of servant leadership. Lines like "the heart of leadership is serving others" are passed round without an author; this is where the idea comes from.
For managers: the supervisor who sorts out the broken scanner and the missing hours before being asked is the one people stay for.
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“The proof of leadership is found in the followers.”
John C. Maxwell
A shift manager is measured by who turns up for the next shift, and who asks to stay on your team.
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“Trust is the foundation of leadership.”
John C. Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. His "Law of Solid Ground".
Pay people what you said, when you said. Every other thing a manager wants is built on that.
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“All good leaders are connectors.”
John C. Maxwell
Learn the names on your shift, and one thing about each person. It costs nothing and people remember it for years.
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“If you listen to them, they'll listen to you.”
Attributed to John Wooden, the basketball coach. Widely credited to Wooden; we could not find where he first said it.
Ask the picker why the line is slow before telling them to go faster. Nine times out of ten, they already know.
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“With great power there must also come great responsibility.”
Stan Lee, Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), the first Spider-Man story. Lee wrote the line as a caption; the films later gave it to Uncle Ben.
Whoever writes the rota decides who gets the weekend and who gets the nights. Do it fairly and in the open.
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They started small too
Some of the biggest companies in the world began in a garage or a rented room. We have told each story as far as the record goes, and corrected two myths that get repeated everywhere.
Hewlett-Packard 1939
Bill Hewlett and David Packard started in a rented garage behind a house in Palo Alto, California, with $538. Their first big customer was Walt Disney, for sound equipment used on Fantasia. The garage is now a California historic landmark, called the birthplace of Silicon Valley.
Disney 1923
Walt Disney and his brother Roy began making cartoons in their uncle Robert's garage in Los Angeles, before renting a real office a few months later.
Apple 1976
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak used the Jobs family home in Los Altos, California, as their first base, and the garage there is where early Apple I computers were finished and tested. Wozniak has said since that the garage part of the story is a little exaggerated: most of the design work happened elsewhere.
Amazon 1994
Jeff Bezos started Amazon as an online bookshop from the garage of a rented house in Bellevue, near Seattle. The first desks were doors on legs, and the door-desk is still a company symbol.
Google 1998
Larry Page and Sergey Brin moved their search engine out of Stanford University into a garage they rented from Susan Wojcicki in Menlo Park, California. She later became one of Google's first employees and ran YouTube.
Microsoft (not a garage) 1975
Often listed as a garage start, but it was not one. Bill Gates and Paul Allen began in rented office space in Albuquerque, New Mexico, writing software for one of the first home computers. The lesson is the same: small, rented, and started before it was ready.
YouTube (not a garage either) 2005
Also often called a garage start. The founders worked from a small office above a pizza restaurant in San Mateo, California. Small beginnings do not need a garage.
And this board
HIRING UK was started by one person in Birmingham who still drives for a living. The first version was a simple site he built himself; this one was built in the evenings after long shifts. Small, and started before it was ready. Our story.