Entrepreneurial Inspirational Quotes

When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.

Success in life is not for those who run fast, but for those who keep running and always on the move.

While others were dreaming about it - I was getting it done.

The bigger the 'why' the easier the 'how'.

An entrepreneur is a man who knows he can fail, but he does not accept to fail before he actually fails, and when he fails he learns from his errors and moves on.

Pivoting is not the end of the disruption process, but the beginning of the next leg of your journey.

No obstacle is so big that one person with determination can't make a difference.

Just because you have baggage doesn't mean you have to lug it around.

The real challenge is for each of us to determine where we feel we can make the most impact.

Lifelong learning is no longer a luxury but a necessity for employment.

Disruptors don't have to discover something new; they just have to discover a practical use for new discoveries.

The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful ones know that the most unprofitable thing ever manufactured is an excuse.

If you can't connect the Dots, Find the right dots first.

Entrepreneurs see what others can't, do what others won't, and accomplish what others dream.

At the heart of all sales and marketing is the ability to create demand even in the absence of logic.

Growing up, Richard performed poorly in school, being severely dyslexic, and could barely read by the age of eight. He developed an interest in sports and business from inheriting his mother’s entrepreneurial spirit.

You have a choice: pursue your dreams, or be hired by someone else to help them fulfill their dreams.

Every threat to the status quo is an opportunity in disguise.

All businesses -- no matter if they make dog food or software -- don't sell products, they sell solutions.

Insight and drive are all the skills you need. Everything else can be hired.

You'll never know how close you are to victory if you give up.

No one who ever led a nation got there by following the path of another.

Your energy is a valuable resource, distribute it wisely.

Starting each day with a positive mindset is the most important step of your journey to discovering opportunity.

It is not incumbent on the world to conform to your vision of change. It is up to you to explain the future in terms that those living in the past and present can follow.

Success doesn't teach as many lessons as failure

Speed to fail should be every entrepreneur's motto. When you finally find the one idea that can't be killed, go with it.

The most important tool you have on a resume is language.

To be successful, innovation is not just about value creation, but value capture.

A free and open Internet is a despot's worst enemy.

Be the best at what you do or the only one doing it.

A disruptor finds opportunity and profit from his misfortunes.

There is a difference between failing and failure. Failing is trying something that you learn doesn't work. Failure is throwing in the towel and giving up.

Our world's future is far more malleable and controllable than most people realize.

A negative mind will never find success. I have never heard a positive idea come from a person in a negative state.

A dream with a deadline is a goal.

Accepting that the odds are against you is the same as accepting defeat before you begin.

A career is just a longer trip with a whole lot more baggage.

You will have more regrets for the things you didn't try than the ones you tried and didn't succeed at.

An average idea enthusiastically embraced will go farther than a genius idea no one gets.

Problems are just businesses waiting for the right entrepreneur to unlock the value.

Smart entrepreneurs learn that they must fail often and fast.

Data may disappoint, but it never lies.

The majority of people are not willing to risk what they have built for the opportunity to have something better.

Would you rather work forty hours a week at a job you hate or eighty hours a week doing work you love?

Most startup failures result from entrepreneurs who are better at making excuses than products.

Data has no ego and makes an excellent co-pilot.

Does your story inspire you? If not, it's time to change it.

Be prepared for twists and turns on the road to success.

The best big idea is only going to be as good as its implementation.

Building a career or a company is about living a few years of your life like most people won't so that you can spend the rest of your life living at a level most people can't.

Corporate planning cycles are a classic example of generals fighting the last war over again instead of preparing for what might lie ahead.

If you can imagine a solution, you can make it happen.

Those that recognize the inevitability of change stand to benefit the most from it.

The customer is always right...even when they're wrong.

The joy of disruption comes from accepting that we all live in a temporal state.

The most successful people have the same twenty-four hours in a day that you do.

If you don't know where you want to be in five years, how do you ever expect to get there?

You can truly have it all, just not all at the same time.

Plan for ways to get more enjoyment into your life and you will get more joy out of it.

Whether driven by ambition or circumstance, every career gets disrupted.

Security doesn't rob ambition; the illusion of security robs ambition.

Disruption isn't about what happens to you, it's about how you respond to what happens to you.

There are riches to be found simply by capturing the value released through others' disruptive breakthroughs.

There are two types of people in this world: those whose look for opportunity and those who make it happen.

If life, you get what you believe you deserve.

The business world is littered with the fossils of companies that failed to evolve. Disrupt or be disrupted. There is no middle ground.

Billions of dollars worth of research knowledge lie dormant at American universities waiting for the right disruptor to come along and create a business.

All Disruption starts with introspection.

You can do more than you think

We can never achieve and succeed without first making excellence second nature.

In life, you get what you believe you deserve.

Ninety-five percent of my assets drive out the gate every evening. It’s my job to maintain a work environment that keeps those people coming back every morning.”2 Having a great culture helps him do that.

The entrepreneur of the world handles difficult situations with stress, worry and frustration relying only on the knowledge they have access to. The entrepreneur with God’s favor has an omniscient presence living inside and is blessed to have answers and solutions to tough problems flow directly to them. Having the favor of God resting on you is a wonderful position to be in, CEO! He has strategically placed us in this entrepreneurial army, not only to defeat the enemy and his advances, but to also go above-and-beyond, reaching success that few obtain.

The mighty Toyota Company was born from the ashes of a failed weaving business. And perhaps you have heard of Wrigley’s gum? William Wrigley started off his company trying to sell baking soda and soap, but he never turned a profit, and so he turned to making and selling chewing gum instead. These men share one thing in common—they were open to change and they listened to their intuition. Sometimes we hear a whisper in the air that guides us positively. This whisper we hear, it is not passive—it is a response to our own enthusiasm, passion, and commitment. We put in the effort and we get back a divine message. Call it inspiration if you want. Call it an entrepreneurial muse. But it feels and sounds like a whisper in your soul. If you hear it, listen to it. You must be willing to change course when it tells you to.

Woodswoman: Living Alone in the Adirondack Wilderness and Linda devoured it, marveling at the independence and frugality of the author, ecologist Anne LaBastille, who was inspired by Walden and built her own cabin using just $600 worth of logs. Next she started Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality, an entrepreneurial self-help tome that she scoured for advice on building a fulfilling future.

Reading this book, you will probably get motivated to take a major faith step, but life can stare you back in the face and tell you that you are stupid to believe that God will answer your prayer. The bottom line is, GOD CAN DO IT, and He will do it if you let Him. Numbers, 23:19 states, “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” Your entrepreneurial dream may seem impossible, but God can do it. Your finances might be in the worst shape that you have ever experienced in your life, but God can fix it. You might not have the education or the skill that you know is required to follow through on your dream, but God can supplement it. Will you trust Him to do it?

Every good-to-great transition in our research began with a Level 5 leader who motivated people more with inspired standards than inspiring personality. Every 10x entrepreneurial success in our research had founders and leaders who, while sometimes colorful characters, never confused leadership with personality; they were utterly obsessed with making the company truly great and ensuring it endured beyond themselves.

With meager resources but inspired military leadership, plus crucial help from France – financial, naval, and troop support on the one hand, and behind-the-scenes diplomatic cover on the other – Americans had triumphed over the world’s mightiest

While Steve Jobs was no doubt an inspiring genius worthy of praise, the fact that the iPhone/iPad empire was built on these State-funded technologies provides a far more accurate tale of technological and economic change than what is offered by mainstream discussions. Given the critical role of the State in enabling companies like Apple, it is especially curious that the debate surrounding Apple’s tax avoidance has tended to overlook this fact. Apple must pay tax not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the ultimate example of a company that requires the public purse to be large and risk-loving enough to continue making the investments that entrepreneurs like Jobs will later capitalize on (Mazzucato 2013b).

An entrepreneurial spirit makes you someone who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business enterprise, talent or calling to become an agent of change.

To succeed and create change, you must be willing to take the risk, with an understanding of a number of key elements. Please begin to understand that an entrepreneurial spirit is not only essential in business enterprise. We all have a business to run in our different areas of specialty. Your life is your business and your family is your business – you have multiple businesses.

One Stanford op-ed in particular was picked up by the national press and inspired a website, Stop the Brain Drain, which protested the flow of talent to Wall Street. The Stanford students wrote, The financial industry’s influence over higher education is deep and multifaceted, including student choice over majors and career tracks, career development resources, faculty and course offerings, and student culture and political activism. In 2010, even after the economic crisis, the financial services industry drew a full 20 percent of Harvard graduates and over 15 percent of Stanford and MIT graduates. This represented the highest portion of any industry except consulting, and about three times more than previous generations. As the financial industry’s profits have increasingly come from complex financial products, like the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that ignited the 2008 financial meltdown, its demand has steadily grown for graduates with technical degrees. In 2006, the securities and commodity exchange sector employed a larger portion of scientists and engineers than semiconductor manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and telecommunications. The result has been a major reallocation of top talent into financial sector jobs, many of which are “socially useless,” as the chairman of the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority put it. This over-allocation reduces the supply of productive entrepreneurs and researchers and damages entrepreneurial capitalism, according to a recent Kauffman Foundation report. Many of these finance jobs contribute to volatile and counter-productive financial speculation. Indeed, Wall Street’s activities are largely dominated by speculative security trading and arbitrage instead of investment in new businesses. In 2010, 63 percent of Goldman Sachs’ revenue came from trading, compared to only 13 percent from corporate finance. Why are graduates flocking to Wall Street? Beyond the simple allure of high salaries, investment banks and hedge funds have designed an aggressive, sophisticated, and well-funded recruitment system, which often takes advantage of [a] student’s job insecurity. Moreover, elite university culture somehow still upholds finance as a “prestigious” and “savvy” career track.6

Someone Else's words can detour your potential!

Disruption causes vast sums of money to flow from existing businesses and business models to new entrants.

Crowdsourcing is the ultimate disruptor of distribution because in a most Zen-like fashion, the content is controlled by everyone and no one at the same time.

The power of crowd sourcing always remains with the crowd, not the technological implementation.

Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel.

CEOs will gladly overpay for a company if the acquisition enables them to keep their jobs.

We all have a little entrepreneur inside of us. Wanting to leverage it is what gives us an entrepreneurial spirit and an entrepreneurial mind. Actually doing it makes one an entrepreneur.

Sir Richard Branson (CEO and Founder of Virgin Company) inspires me to build my best...and then continue building. An entrepreneurial mindset can always benefit from a daily dose of what I buzz 'Branson-spiration'...

The world never gave you a chance because you never took it.

You never took a chance, so the world never gave you a chance.

It's usually the crazy ones who win. I’m crazy.

The Visionary DNA Common Roles Common Traits Common Challenges • Entrepreneurial “spark plug” • Are the founding entrepreneur • Inconsistency • Inspirer • Have lots of ideas/idea creation/idea growth • Organizational “whiplash,” the head turn • Passion provider • Are strategic thinkers • Dysfunctional team, a lack of openness and honesty • Developer of new/big ideas/breakthroughs • Always see the big picture • Lack of clear direction/undercommunication • Big problem solver • Have a pulse on the industry and target market • Reluctance to let go • Engager and maintainer of big external relationships • Research and develop new products and services • Underdeveloped leaders and managers • Closer of big deals • Manage big external relationships (e.g., customer, vendor, industry) • “Genius with a thousand helpers” • Learner, researcher, and discoverer • Get involved with customers and employees when Visionary is needed • Ego and feelings of value dependent on being needed by others • Company vision creator and champion • Inspire people • Eyes (appetite) bigger than stomach; 100 pounds in a 50-pound bag • Are creative problem solvers (big problems) • Resistance to following standardized processes • Create the company vision and protect it • Quickly and easily bored • Sell and close big deals • No patience for the details • Connect the dots • Amplification of complexity and chaos • On occasion do the work, provide the service, make the product • ADD (typical; not always) • All foot on gas pedal—with no brake • Drive is too hard for most people

What inspires or motivates anyone to become an entrepreneur? The stories here suggest two ingredients go into the decision to start a company. Someone sees herself filling a need for others with a new product or service. Making something new to which the market responds, being the first to do so, entering into an unknown world by starting a company that could fail or make her wealthy, all suggest challenges that excite every entrepreneur. All these entrepreneurs were at moments in their careers at which they could consider new life plans and take on the challenges of starting companies. All implicitly weighed their circumstances, and the possibilities that awaited them if they let the entrepreneurial moment pass. Some had secure employment, mortgages, family obligations, or pending job offers. While such considerations hold others back, entrepreneurs choose the path of adventure. They set out to make the new, and in the process to make a different life for themselves. Some, as we will see shortly, can’t help themselves.

Imperfection is a part of any creative process and of life, yet for some reason we live in a culture that has a paralyzing fear of failure, which prevents action and hardens a rigid perfectionism. It's the single most disempowering state of mind you can have if you'd like to be more creative, inventive, or entrepreneurial.

Entrepreneurship isn't about starting an existing business or working on an existing idea or concept developed before but Entrepreneurship is all about understanding emerging challenges and providing solutions in a way that inspires innovation, creativity, and critical thinking.

The best leader cannot provide the necessary constant renewal if he or she lacks entrepreneurial skills.

Your success is limited to how big or small you think...Think Global to go Global.