99 Inspirational Quotes for Entrepreneurs

Are you an Entrepreneur? If so I’ve mined the internet for famous quotes on Entrepreneurship to inspire and motivate you. I’m sharing 99 of them which I liked the most. Please feel free to leave your valuable comments below and let me know what do you feel about the same!

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. – Thomas Edison

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. – Vidal Sassoon

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming. – Richard Branson

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune. – Jim Rohn

An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it. – Roy Ash

The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake – you can’t learn anything from being perfect. – Adam Osborne

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them. – John C. Maxwell

Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves. - E. Joseph Cossman

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. – Albert Einstein

You can’t ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new. – Steve Jobs

Live out of your imagination instead of out of your memory. – Fortune Cookie

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. – Maya Angelou

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said. – Peter F. Drucker

If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough. – Mario Andretti

If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals, then it’s moving you away from your goals. – Brian Tracy

The entrepreneur builds an enterprise; the technician builds a job. – Michael Gerber

As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big. – Donald Trump

Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up. – Thomas J. Watson

The link between my experience as an entrepreneur and that of a politician is all in one word: freedom. – Silvio Berlusconi

Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill

A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions. – Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way. – Napoleon Hill

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. – Bill Cosby

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. – Bill Cosby

Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it. – W. Clement Stone

Success is not in what you have, but who you are. – Bo Bennet

Failure is not about insecurity. It’s about lack of execution. – Jeffrey Gitomer

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. – Henry Ford

Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness. -  Napoleon Hill

Regardless of who you are or what you have been, you can be what you want to be. – W. Clement Stone

Better understated than overstated. Let people be surprised that it was more than you promised and easier than you said. – Jim Rohn

Try not to be a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value. – Albert Einstein

The best way to predict the future is to create it. – Peter Drucker

You can do anything you wish to do, have anything you wish to have, be anything you wish to be. – Robert Collier

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. – John C. Maxwell

For every good reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth. – Bo Bennett

Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual. – Natalie Clifford Barney

Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night. – Henry Ford

You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win. – Zig Ziglar

Every choice you make has an end result. – Zig Ziglar

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. – Jim Rohn

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often. – Mark Twain

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are asking, What’s in it for me? – Brian Tracy

A goal is a dream with a deadline. – Napoleon Hill

Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice. – Peter Drucker

Tell the world what you intend to do, but first show it. – Napoleon Hill

The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. – Ralph Nader

Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know. – Jim Rohn

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic. – Dale Carnegie

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea. – Napoleon Hill

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. – Napoleon Hill

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions. – Confucius

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. – Andre Gide

Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it. - Jim Rohn

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got! – Alan Scott

Vision without action is daydreaming and action without vision is a nightmare. – Anon

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get. – Dale Carnegie

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning. – Benjamin Franklin

If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal. – Zig Ziglar

The few who do are the envy of the many who only watch. – Jim Rohn

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way. – Christopher Morley

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. – Walt Disney

I’d say it’s been my biggest problem all my life.. it’s money. It takes a lot of money to make these dreams come true. – Walt Disney

Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything. – W. Clement Stone

Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together. – Napoleon Hill

Giving is better than receiving because giving starts the receiving process. – Jim Rohn

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. – Bill Gates

If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful. – Jeff Bezos

Many great ideas go unexecuted, and many great executioners are without ideas. One without the other is worthless. – Tim Blixseth

I’ve always worked very, very hard, and the harder I worked, the luckier I got. - Alan Bond

Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you. – Mark Cuban

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone. – Thomas Carlyle

You won’t get anything unless you have the vision to imagine it. – John Lennon

Ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea. – Jim Rohn

If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough. – Mario Andretti

If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share. – W. Clement Stone

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success – Henry Ford

Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have – Zig Ziglar

The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same. – Colin R. Davis

Success is how high you bounce after you hit bottom. – General George Patton

If you are going to ask yourself life-changing questions, be sure to do something with the answers. – Bo Bennett

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. – David Ogilvy

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will. – Zig Ziglar

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm. In the real world all rests on perseverance. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. – Cicero

Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together. – Napoleon Hill

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes. – Benjamin Disraeli

Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. – Marion C. Garretty

I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success. – Jack Welch

You take on the responsibility for making your dream a reality. – Les Brown

I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying. – Michael Jordan

Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be. – Jack Welch

If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete. – Jack Welch

As a rule, we find what we look for; we achieve what we get ready for. – James Cash Penney

Money won’t make you happy… but everybody wants to find out for themselves. – Zig Ziglar

It is always the start that requires the greatest effort. – James Cash Penney

If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary. – Jim Rohn

Thinking about starting a business? Make sure you’re cut out for it first.

In this bleak economy, lots of people are contemplating striking out on their own — whether they’re frustrated job seekers or people who are already employed but getting antsy about their company’s prospects.

For some people, entrepreneurship is the best option around, a way to build wealth and do something you love without answering to somebody else. But it’s also a huge financial gamble — and some people, unfortunately, will discover too late that it’s not the right fit for them.

Building a successful business can take years filled with setbacks, long hours and little reward. Certain personalities thrive on the challenge and embrace the sacrifices. But it can be a hard switch for someone who has spent years sitting in a cubicle with a steady paycheck.

So, how can you figure out whether you’re suited for self-employment? We spoke with entrepreneurship researchers, academics and psychologists to come up with a list of questions you should ask yourself before making a big leap. Entrepreneurs, of course, come from all sorts of backgrounds, with all sorts of personalities. But our experts agreed that certain attributes improve the odds people will be successful and happy about their decision.

Keep in mind that any self-analysis is only as useful as the truthfulness of the answers — and most people aren’t exactly the best judges of their own character. So, you might enlist a friend’s help.

Here, then, are 10 questions to ask to see whether you’re up for the challenge of entrepreneurship.

1. Are you willing and able to bear great financial risk?

Roughly half of all start-ups close within five years, so you must be realistic about the financial risks that come with owning a business — and realize that you could very well lose a sizable chunk of your net worth.

Consider how much you’ll have to ante up and how losing it would affect your other financial goals, such as having a sound retirement or paying your kids’ college tuition. Weigh the importance of starting a business against the sacrifices you might face.

Entrepreneurs should be sure that "if they lose this capital, it either won’t destroy their financial situation, or they can accept the concept of bankruptcy," says Scott Shane, an entrepreneurship professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "Some people thrive on the financial risk; others are devastated by the thought of losing even $10,000."

And don’t assume you’ll be able to lower your risk substantially by finding investors. Less than 10% of start-up financing comes from venture capitalists, angel investors and loans from friends and family combined, Prof. Shane says. And that’s true even in good economic times. Banks, meanwhile, often won’t lend to start-up founders without a proven track record. When they do, they generally require the founders to guarantee the loan or credit line with their personal savings or home — an incredibly risky proposition.

2. Are you willing to sacrifice your lifestyle for potentially many years?

If you’re used to steady paychecks, four weeks’ paid vacation and employer-sponsored health benefits, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Creating a successful start-up often entails putting in workweeks of 60 hours or more and funneling any revenue you can spare back into the business. Entrepreneurs frequently won’t pay themselves a livable salary in the early years and will forgo real vacations until their business is financially sound. That can often take eight years or longer, says William Bygrave, a professor emeritus of entrepreneurship at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass.

Even if you can steal away, it’s hard to find somebody who can fill in for you. Many entrepreneurs must tow along their cellphone and laptop, so they can be available to answer questions from clients or employees.

Jennifer Walzer learned those lessons the hard way. In 2002, after being laid off from a $100,000 consulting job when the company closed, she started Backup My Info! Inc., which sells online data-backup services to businesses.

For the first year, the New York-based company brought in just $29,000 in gross revenue. Ms. Walzer didn’t pay herself a salary until the third year, and even then it was a slim $30,000. She could have taken more out, but she wanted to shovel as much money into the business as possible to keep it financially sound.

Having no income for two years meant that Ms. Walzer had to be extremely frugal; she virtually never ate out or went on vacations or clothes-shopping trips. Twenty-nine years old at the time, she says, "I got very jealous of my girlfriends who got home at 5 o’clock every night and could go out gallivanting and pretty much do whatever they pleased." She’d occasionally meet friends for coffee instead of drinks, since coffee was less expensive.

Now that her business generates about $2 million in annual revenue, the tables have turned. Ms. Walzer says she earns more from the business than she did as a consultant, and "I have friends who are struggling to keep their jobs because they have bosses."

3. Is your significant other on board?

Don’t ignore the toll running a business will take on your loved ones. Failed ventures frequently break up marriages, and even successful ones can cause lots of stress, because entrepreneurs devote so much time and money to the business.

"I’m always surprised at the number of husbands who start a business and don’t tell their wives," says Bo Fishback, vice president of entrepreneurship at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

You can avoid the heartache by talking at length with your spouse and family about how the business will affect home life, including the time commitment, changes in daily schedules and chores, financial risks and sacrifices. They must also understand the huge financial gamble they’re making with you.

4. Do you like all aspects of running a business?

You better. In the early stages of a business, founders are often expected to handle everything from billing customers to hiring employees to writing marketing materials. Some new entrepreneurs become annoyed that they’re spending the majority of their time on administration when they’d rather be focused on the part of the job they enjoy, says Donna Ettenson, vice president of the Association of Small Business Development Centers in Burke, Va.

"All of a sudden, they have to think about all these things they never had to think about before," she says.

Jeromy Stallings, the 33-year-old founder of Ninthlink Inc., a San Diego interactive-marketing firm with 15 employees, always felt he had plenty of passion for entrepreneurship and self-motivation. But when starting his agency in 2003 and hiring his first couple of employees, he realized he wasn’t prepared for the day-to-day challenges of managing other people.

Mr. Stallings had assumed his passion would rub off on employees and they would do their jobs as enthusiastically as he did. But some clients started calling him directly, complaining that his employees weren’t returning phone calls or that projects were behind schedule.

"My clients were saying, ‘We love your passion, we love your skill, we’re just having a really hard time with your management style,’ " he says.

So, Mr. Stallings turned to peers, mentors and guidebooks for help. He realized he needed to work more closely with employees and create a more structured project-management system. "I didn’t really have a plan in place for how they spend their time," he says.

5. Are you comfortable making decisions on the fly with no playbook?

With a new business, you’re calling all the shots — and there are a lot of decisions to be made without any guidance. You might not be used to that if you’ve spent years working in corporate America, says Bill Wagner, author of "The Entrepreneur Next Door," a book that lays out the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs.

"For most entrepreneurial ventures, there’s no structure," he says. "You’re going into a business, and nobody has told you how to be successful."

Mr. Wagner has surveyed more than 10,000 entrepreneurs to find out what traits distinguish successful start-up founders from less-successful ones. Among other things, most entrepreneurs he interviewed said they liked making decisions. He doesn’t rule out the idea that less-decisive people could become better at the leadership role. It’s just that they will have to work a lot harder at it.

6. What’s your track record of executing your ideas?

One of the biggest differences between successful entrepreneurs and everyone else is their ability to implement their ideas, says Prof. Bygrave of Babson College. You might have a wonderful concept, but that doesn’t mean you possess that special mix of drive, persuasiveness, leadership skills and keen intuition to actually turn the idea into a lucrative business.

So, examine your past objectively to see whether you have assumed leadership roles or initiated solo projects — anything that might suggest you’re good at executing ideas. "Were you senior class president? Did you play varsity sports?" Prof. Bygrave suggests asking.

You might even find clues back in your childhood, he adds: "A lot of successful entrepreneurs were starting businesses when they were still kids."

7. How persuasive and well-spoken are you?

Nearly every step of the way, entrepreneurship relies on selling. You’ll have to sell your idea to lenders or investors. You must sell your mission and vision to your employees. And you’ll ultimately have to sell your product or service to your customers. You’ll need strong communication and interpersonal skills so you can get people to believe in your vision as much as you do.

If you don’t think you’re very convincing or have difficulty communicating your ideas, you might want to reconsider starting your own company — or think about getting some help.

In 2007, Brad Price left a $135,000-a-year job as an associate at a Baltimore law firm to purchase a PuroClean Emergency Restoration Services franchise, which cleans up property damage such as mold and flooded basements. A former Naval officer, Mr. Price felt he was very self-motivated and a good leader. But he was less comfortable cold-calling and striking deals — something he’d never had to do in previous jobs.

"There’s a big difference in waiting for the phone to ring and getting an assignment and having to make the phone ring," says the 33-year-old Mr. Price.

Mr. Price says he now has his wife handle the marketing and networking. "My wife is very good at that, ‘Hey, next time a call comes in, how about you give it to us?’ " he says.

8. Do you have a concept you’re passionate about?

Every morning you want to jump out of bed eager to get to work. If you’re not that exuberant about how you’ll be spending your time — or the business concept itself — running a business is going to be a rough ride.

Ms. Ettenson of the Association of Small Business Development Centers has coached many prospective entrepreneurs about their chosen business. She always asks why they’re doing it. If they suggest it’s mostly for the prospect of making a lot of money or because they’re tired of working for someone else, she steers them toward something more in line with their interests or avoiding self-employment altogether.

"If you hate doing paperwork, the last thing you want to do is become a bookkeeper," Ms. Ettenson says. "If you’d rather be outside taking people into the wilderness, then that’s the type of business you should be in."

But it’s also usually wise to find a business in an industry you are very familiar with; it will be much harder to succeed if you know little about the field. Mr. Fishback at Kauffman says he has steered a doctor and other professionals away from starting restaurants because they often don’t grasp how difficult and risky restaurant ownership is. And they’d be competing against restaurateurs with years of experience.

9. Are you a self-starter?

Entrepreneurs face lots of discouragement. Potential buyers don’t return calls, business sours or you face repeated rejection. It takes willpower and an almost unwavering optimism to overcome these constant obstacles.

John Gartner, an assistant clinical-psychiatry professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of the book "The Hypomaniac Edge," theorizes that many well-known entrepreneurs have a temperament called hypomania. They’re highly creative, energetic, impatient and very persistent — traits that help them persevere even when others lose faith.

"One of the things about having this kind of confidence is they’re kind of risk-blind because they don’t think they could fail," Prof. Gartner says. And, he adds, "if they fail, they’re not down for that long, and after a while they’re energized by a whole new idea."

You don’t have to be as driven as, say, Steve Jobs to succeed. But somebody who gets deterred easily, or too upset when things go wrong, won’t last.

10. Do you have a business partner?

If you don’t have all the traits you need to run the show, it’s not necessarily a hopeless endeavor. Finding a business partner who compensates for your shortcomings — and has equal enthusiasm for the business concept — can help mitigate the risks and even boost the odds of success.

David Gage, co-founder of BMC Associates, an Arlington, Va., business-mediation practice, points to a Marquette University study of 2,000 businesses. The researchers found that partner-run businesses are far more likely to become high-growth ventures than those started by solo entrepreneurs.

The key, Mr. Gage says, is finding a partner who prefers handling different aspects of the business, so you’re complementing each other — and not constantly at each other’s throats.

Someone who likes to take risks and be in the spotlight, for instance, might choose a cautious partner who prefers to work in the back room. "If they’re willing to work with that person, and not just look at them as a wet blanket, then it can be great," Mr. Gage says.

But taking on a partner isn’t a light decision. Many partnerships split due to conflicts over everything from attitudes about money to miscommunication and contrasting work ethics. Mr. Gage recommends that potential partners spend several days hashing out the specifics of the business and how the arrangement will work to see if they’re compatible.

Source: Wall Street Journal

If a venture firm and all goes well, they will provide you funding for growth in return for an equity share in the business, often a controlling share. At one point, they will ask you for a business plan.

Venture investors do not want to see the same plan that you might write as an operating guide to building the business.. Venture investors are very straightforward in what they want to learn from a business plan:

1. What is the investment proposition?
2. Do you have a convincing plan for business growth?
3. Can the management team execute the plan?

Investment Proposition: Remember the distinction between your focus and that of the VC. Your primary concern is business; the VC’s primary concern is money. You want to succeed at launching and building the business of your dreams. The VC wants to invest money and extract multiple gains. To the VC, your business is a means to his end. In your business plan you must define the investment proposition by answering three questions:

1. How much money are you seeking?
2. What are you offering in return?
3. What are the exit options for the VC?

Be very clear and sure about how much funding you are raising. This number should tie into your business plan projects. How do you intend to use the money and over what timeframe? Usually businesses seeking early stage capital will have to offer a significant share of the business in return. VCs will frequently want in excess of 50% of the company. When can the investors expect to cash in their investments and how?

Growth Plan: What is your business model? What kind of growth do you expect, how will it be achieved, how will funds be applied, and what are the expected results of each investment subproject? Two very important questions to address are: how will the business be scaled for growth and how will the pacing and timing of expenditures and revenue impact cash flow and profitability? For a business to rapidly expand by 5 or 10 times, management controls and systems must be put in place. The infrastructure of the company must be able to support and control rapid growth.

Management Execution: Identify the management team and demonstrate that they are the right team to execute. As a company grows, the skills and management practices required change. The VC will want to explore whether the current management team has a growth vision and the execution skills to actualize the investment proposition. No matter how brief, view every interaction as an opportunity to demonstrate command and mastery of the knowledge and skills your investors are seeking.
You would be well served to address the above questions in a concise and clear investment summary of 2 to 4 pages as the first part of your plan. Speak directly to your VC keeping your sentences simple and to the point.

A nicely designed and pretty appealing pink color website called WhateverLife.com is owned by 17 year old girl “Ashley Qualls”. It is a site that offers MySpace layouts, graphics, and most impressive magazine for teens making million-dollar business. With over 60 million page views and 7 million monthly visitors, she makes over 70 thousand dollars a month with advertising affiliate programs such as Google’s AdSense. The most impressive part of Ashley’s Million-Dollar Business is the only significant source of revenue so far is advertising on Web.

Ashley started WhateverLife.com as a hobby when she was 14 years old, with just about 8 dollars borrowed from her mother. Today after three years she could manage to drop out school make over $1 million a year, offering a lifestyle to her family member that was never known earlier. Recently the teen CEO of WhateverLife.com got 4-bedroom house and built herself a home-office in the basement. Ashley found herself interested in graphic website designing and soon after that she grabbed the online social network craze. As and when the demand increased, the supply was simultaneously increased from Ashley’s website. Till date, she has offered the designs, which are cheery, colorful and unique with lots of hearts – Ashley’s favorites.

At the age of 17 Ashley is very much an Internet Professional who even allows companies run by tenderfoot entrepreneurs to battle, in spite of of funding, place, size, or experience–and she believes that cleverness is ageless. Her MySpace page layouts are obtainable free of cost, so only major source of her revenue is advertising. It is no doubt that Ashley is different from recent crop of high-profile teen entrepreneurs. She is a person that comes up with a right idea at right time. Teen girls generally, cut and paste the HTML code designed by Ashley in WhateverLife.com in order to achieve a new look. "It is all about giving girls what they desire," Ashley says

During 2005, her site traffic mounted to the extreme, it was then she owned her own dedicated server. Simultaneously, she approached Google AdSense to supplies ads to the site and share revenue. As the site traffic improved, the earnings were improved. Ashley’s first check was for $2,700, next was for $5,000 and third was for $10,000. The hard work done by Ashley is extremely remarkable, and hence she was paid off well. Many might also think that Ashley lost her playful childhood working hard towards her successful business, but yet she does not think so.

Many internet savvy people make money blogging or they may desire to scratch internet marketing to generate profit, but just a 17 year old Ashley used creativity and her hobby to reach success at this age. I believe dedication is what required achieving that you desire in life. Ashley says – “If you concentrate on where your heart is, then you would certainly head in the right direction”. One only need to research the desired market, consult those with more experience, learn the business and be strategic to achieve your goals. I am pretty impressed by the success story of Ashley and I would love to learn from her experience!