High-Growth Business

Fast Company

Charles R. Schwab Quotes

Life, Achievement, Entrepreneurship, Fast Thinking, Creating Customer Value, Organization

Charles Schwab advice quotes  

 

 

Charles R. Schwab is an American businessman and investor and the founder of the Charles Schwab Corporation.

Today, the company serves 8.2 million client brokerage accounts, with $1.65 trillion in assets (as of September 2011), from over 300 offices in the U.S., one office in Puerto Rico, one branch in London, and one branch in Hong Kong

(see Charles Schwab Timeline)

 

 

 

Life, Achievement

Lead the life that will make you kindly and friendly to everyone about you, and you will be surprised what a happy life you will lead.

Everyone's got it in him, if he'll only make up his mind and stick at it. None of us is born with a stop-valve on his powers or with a set limit to his capacities. There's no limit possible to the expansion of each one of us.

When a man has put a limit on what he will do, he has put a limit on what he can do.

The man who has done his best has done everything.

Entrepreneurship

The first essential in a boy's career is to find out what he's fitted for, what he's most capable of doing and doing with a relish.

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.’

A man to carry on a successful business must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing.

A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.

I was once asked if a big business man ever reached his objective. I replied that if a man ever reached his objective he was not a big business man.

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.

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

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.

Creating Customer Value

I feel good every day about helping people invest; helping them achieve financial independence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Winning Organization and People

All successful employers are stalking men who will do the unusual, men who think, men who attract attention by performing more than is expected of them.

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 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.

Fast Thinking

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