We’ve collected inspiring, motivational quotes from business leaders, entrepreneurs and small business owners offering tips and nuggets of wisdom on how to succeed in business. If you know of any business-related quotes (including your own!), please feel free to submit it to us.
Quotes on Serving the Needs of the Customers
“Customers don’t care how much time something takes to build. They only care that it serves their needs.”
- Eric Reis, from his book The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
Quotes on Being Different and Unique
“Whether you have a product, a service or a brand, it is not easy to start a company and to survive and thrive in the modern world. In fact, you’ve got to do something radically different to make a mark today.
Look at the most successful businesses of the past 20 years. Microsoft, Google or Apple, for example, shook up a sector by doing something that hadn’t ever been done and by continually innovating. They are now among the dominant forces.”
- Sir Richard Branson in “Startup Tips from Richard Branson”
“If you provide a product or service that’s just like an existing product or service, you will probably not succeed. You need to be faster, more varied, slower, cheaper, easier to work with, prettier, more highly recommended, or longer lasting. Entrepreneurs rarely have enough capital to beat an entrenched competitor at her own game.”
- Seth Godin, “If You’re Clueless About Starting Your Own Business and Want to Know More,” p. 36.
Quotes on the Importance of Getting Feedback
“The thing that requires the most courage in entrepreneurship is being willing to get the actual feedback about your vision and then still do it anyway.”
- Eric Reis, author of The Lean Startup (“The Boy in the Bubble,” Fast Company, Nov 2011, p.148)
Quotes on the Learning to be Inquisitive
“You can’t understand Google, unless you know that both Larry and Sergey were Montessori kids … It’s really ingrained in their personalities. To ask their own questions, do their own things. To disrespect authority. Do something because it makes sense, not because some authority figure told you. In Montessori school you go paint because you have something to express or you just want to do it that afternoon, not because the teacher said so. This is really baked into how Larry and Sergey approach problems. They’re always asking ‘Why should it be like that?’ It’s the way their brains were programmed early on.”
- Marissa Mayer in the book “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes our Lives” by Steven Levy (Simon and Shuster, 2011, pp.121-122)
Quotes on the Importance of Timing
“The trick is not to develop something that’s years ahead of its time. A big payoff results from creating something that’s about 15 minutes ahead of its time. And you’ll hit the jackpot if you come up with something that’s about 5 minutes ahead. Like a surfer looking for the perfect wave, if you time it just right, you may be in for an exciting ride.”
- Harvey Reese, “How to License Your Million Dollar Idea: Everything You Need to Know to Make Money from Your New Product Idea,” p. 45
”Timing is a critical aspect of any negotiation. Whenever you make an offer, give a deadline for acceptance. On the other hand, if someone tries to give you a deadline to accept a deal, simply say, ‘If that’s all the time I have, then the answer is no.”
- Brian Tracy, in his book “Great Little Book on Universal Laws of Success,” p. 50
Quotes on Looking at the Big Picture
“You have to be a detail oriented person while still seeing the big picture and have another picture that you can go to seamlessly if that picture gets lost.
- Haralee Weintraub, Founder of Haralee.com, in “Haralee Weintraub: Turning Adversity into a Successful Niche Apparel Business,” interview in Women Home Business
Quotes on Focusing on the Emotions
“Whether you sell B-to-B or B-to-C, humans buy based on emotion.”
- Brian Lewis, Vice President of Engine Ready, speaking in August 2011 at the InterACT! Virtual Conference and Expo Session “Pureflo Landing Page Case Study”
Quotes on Trusting Your Instincts
“The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to trust my instincts. Go with your gut and respect what your instincts tell you. I’ve seen the truth of this play out so many times in a lot of different situations. The truth is that while you can (and should) do all your research and due diligence and analyze all your options, in the end it comes down to taking a leap of faith and trusting yourself.”
- Emily Kane, Founder, Milkmakers.com in the interview “Emily Kane: Meeting the Challenges of Breastfeeding with Milkmakers” in Women Home Business
“If your gut tells you that a deal is too risky or that your partners seem untrustworthy, pay attention, step back, and reflect. If you go ahead anyway, do so with extra protection, especially in terms of documentation.”
- R. Donahue Peebles, owner of the real estate development company The Peebles Corporation in his book The Peebles Principles
Quotes on Having Courage
“I was not an overnight superstar, but I was willing to work and willing to learn, and that paid off for me. Every change I made was a small step forward, and as long as I took more steps forward than backward I felt as though I was making progress. I learned that if things weren’t working for me, I had to change, and not expect others to change. But the single greatest lesson I learned was that it takes courage, not confidence, to build a business.”
- Mary Christensen, Author and popular speaker on direct selling and network marketing, in “Have the Courage to Build Your Business”
Quotes on Thinking Big and Aiming High
“Even if you fail at your ambitious thing, it’s very hard to fail completely.”
- Larry Page, Google co-founder and CEO, in the book “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes our Lives,” by Steven Levy, published by Simon and Shuster (2011), p. 12
Quotes on Being Prepared for the Challenge
“One of the things that really define an entrepreneur is you get punched in the stomach over and over and over again, and you just have to show up the next day and keep it going. It really is just persistence.”
- Jen Bilik, founder of stationary and gift company Knock Knock in the Inc. Magazine interview “The Way I Work,” October 2011, pp. 114-116
Quotes on Dealing with Failure
“I always feel that failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you and letting you know you’re off course.”
- Sarah Blakely, Founder and President of Spanx, in the book “The Risk Takers: 16 Women and Men Share their Entrepreneurial Strategies for Success” by Renee and Don Martin (Vanguard Press, published 2010, pp. 156)
“Failure is a prerequisite for great success. If you want to succeed faster, double your rate of failure.”
- Brian Tracy, in the book “Great Little Book on Universal Laws of Success” (Successories Publishing, 1996, p. 73)
“The line between failure and success is so fine, that we are often on the line and do not know it.”
- Elbert Hubbard