850 Inspirational Business Plan Quotes For Entrepreneurs
1. “The one with the plan is the one with the power. It doesn’t matter in what kind of activity you’re involved. Employees want to follow the business leader with a good business plan. Volunteers want to join the pastor with a good ministry plan. Children want to be with the adult who has the well-thought-out vacation plan. If you practice strategic thinking, others will listen to you and they will want to follow you.”
2. “Going into business without a business plan is like going on a mountain trek without a map or GPS support – you’ll eventually get lost and starve!”
3. “Good business planning is 9 parts execution for every 1 part strategy.” – Tim Berry
4. “School programs the schooled to type a CV. Life inspires the unschooled to type a business plan.”
5. “In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” - Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook
6. “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower
7. “Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.” —Paul Rand, graphic designer (Click to tweet)
8. “Success is very much the intersection of luck and hard work.”
9. “Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.”
10. “Success is how high you bounce after you hit bottom.”
11. “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” —Pelé, professional footballer
12. “Always give your best effort even when the odds are against you.”
13. “I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”
14. “We cannot drive people; we must direct their development” – Henry Gantt, creator of the Gantt Chart
15. “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
16. “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.” —Thomas Edison, co-founder of General Electric (Click to tweet)
17. “Stick to your true north― build greatness for the long term.”―Ruth Porat
18. “I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.”—Lily Tomlin, actress
19. “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved.” – Helen Keller
20. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” —George Addair, real-estate developer
21. “You can't fear what you haven't figured out yet, and sometimes naïveté can be the best business strategy of all.” – Jaclyn Johnson, WorkParty: How to Create & Cultivate the Career of Your Dreams
22. “Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you’ve got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don’t start, you never get a chance.” - Seth Godin, author and entrepreneur
23. “Success is the sum of small efforts—repeated day in and day out.” —Robert Collier, author
24. “You don’t need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.”
25. “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” - Steve Jobs
26. “Don’t start a business unless it’s an obsession and something you love. If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.” - Mark Cuban
27. “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.” —Will Rogers, performer
28. “Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.” – Babe Ruth
29. “Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution; this gives you a 1,000 percent return on energy!” ― Brian Tracy, author and motivational speaker
30. “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
31. “Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel
32. “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”
33. “Everything starts with the customer.”
34. “When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened, or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back.” —Paulo Coelho, lyricist and novelist
35. “If you push through that feeling of being scared, that feeling of taking risk, really amazing things can happen.”
36. “First, think. Second, believe. Third, dream. And finally, dare.”
37. “Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.” - Napoleon Hill
38. “Good intentions might sound nice, but it’s positive actions that matter.” – Tim Fargo
39. “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” ~ Pablo Picasso
40. “A small business is an amazing way to serve and leave an impact on the world you live in.”
41. “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” ~ Alexander Graham Bell
42. “I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.” – G.K. Chesterton
43. “The Golden Rule for Every Business is this: Put Yourself in your Customer’s Place.”
44. “A plan relieves you of the torment of choice.” ~ Saul Bellow
45. “If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out.” —Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (Click to tweet)
46. “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vidal Sassoon
47. “There are dreamers and there are planners; the planners make their dreams come true.”
48. “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”
49. “You renew yourself every day. Sometimes you’re successful, sometimes you’re not, but it’s the average that counts.”
50. “In this lifetime, you don’t have to prove nothing to nobody, except yourself. And after what you’ve gone through, if you haven’t done that by now, it ain’t gonna never happen.” —Fortune, Rudy
51. “Never give up. Great things take time.”
52. “You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don’t believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can’t possibly foresee now.” ― Harry S. Truman, former U.S. President
53. “The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.” ~ Miguel De Cervantes
54. “Don't worry about failure; you only have to be right once.”
55. “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
56. “Plan for what it is difficult while it is easy, Do what is great while it is small.”
57. “One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.”
58. “Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.” ― Fitzhugh Dodson, author
59. “I have a theory and I really believe it. I think your worst weakness can become your greatest single strength.”
60. “Happy employees lead to happy customers, which leads to more profits.” – Vaughn Aust, EVP of Integrated Solutions, MarketStar
61. “Without a plan, even the most brilliant business can get lost. You need to have goals, create milestones, and have a strategy to set yourself up for success.” -Yogi Berra.
62. “Don’t delay. Every day that you work in your business without a vision, without a plan, and without proving it works is another day that you delay your success.”
63. “The most successful people I know – in business and in life – move silently. They don’t make a lot of noise about what they’re doing. They don’t boast about their plans or their accomplishments. They just quietly go about their business, making things happen.”
64. “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”
65. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.” —Zig Ziglar, author
66. “If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.” —Zig Ziglar, author, salesman, and motivational speaker (Click to tweet)
67. “He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life.” ~ Victor Hugo
68. “Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.” —Alfred, Batman Begins
69. “Proper planning and preparation prevents poor performance.” ― Stephen Keague, author
70. “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
71. A person should always be aware and mentally prepared to accept the rise and fall of his business at any point in time since it is not secure. But if planned properly, with the help of experts, then the business has a greater rate of success.
72. “Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.” – Richard Branson
73. Pixar started as a company that sold a special computer for doing digital animation; it took a while till they got into the moviemaking business. Similarly, Starbucks originally sold only coffee beans and coffee equipment; they hadn't planned to sell coffee by the cup. - Author: Reid Hoffman
74. “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” – Alexander Graham Bell
75. “You don’t build a business. You build people and people build the business.”
76. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
77. “Barnes won his goal, because he wanted to be a business associate of Mr. Edison, more than he wanted anything else. He created a plan by which to attain that purpose. But he BURNED ALL BRIDGES BEHIND HIM. He stood by his DESIRE until it became the dominating obsession of his life-and-finally, a fact.”
78. “In the business world, and in life, there are inherent complexities. It is critical to keep plans and communication simple.”
79. “Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action.”~ Napoleon Hill
80. “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” —David Brinkley, newscaster
81. “Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.”
82. “I realized that if I was willing to step up and be in the spotlight, I’d be able to make everyone else around me much more powerful as well.”― Alaina Percival
83. “The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.” – Barack Obama
84. “If you’re not [learning], you’re falling behind. Somebody else is getting better as you’re becoming less valuable. I see so many irrelevant salespeople I want to cry. They stopped learning.”― Jill Konrath
85. “Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.” —Roger Crawford, public speaker, author, and certified tennis professional
86. “The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.” ~ Napoleon Hill
87. “Startups are the truest passion projects.” - Vinay Kanchan
88. “Never ever give up! Constant effort is the key to success.”
89. “Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.” —Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media (Click to tweet)
90. “You have to believe in yourself when no one else does—that makes you a winner right there.” —Venus Williams, professional tennis player
91. “Never Give up. Today is hard and tomorrow will be Worse, but the day after Tomorrow will be Sunshine.”
92. “Keep your face always toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.”
93. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
94. “I use social media as an idea generator, trend mapper and strategic compass for all of our online business ventures.” – Paul Barron(@paulbarron)
95. “Unless you have definite, precise, clearly set goals, you are not going to realize the maximum potential that lies within you.” ~ Zig Ziglar
96. “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.” - Simon Sinek
97. “A great strategy is born of constraint.” Terry O’Reilly
98. “A plan that is not written, is just an idea.” ~ Dwain Siady
99. “A sampling plan is all about how you’re planning to gather data for your market research. It is going to include a sample of all those people who can represent your target audience and can also be easily studied.”
100. “I don’t know the word ‘quit.’ Either I never did, or I have abolished it.” – Susan Butcher
101. “The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new.” —Socrates, father of Western philosophy (Click to tweet)
102. “I find that the harder I work the more luck I seem to have.”
103. “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.”—Michael Jordan, former professional basketball player
104. “If you don't love what you do, you won’t do it with much conviction or passion.” - Mia Hamm
105. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” - Winston Churchill
106. “Importantly, in a great team, you argue about ideas totally independent of ego. In great teams, the success of your idea is independent from your success. Just helping to find the best idea matters.” - Tobi Lütke
107. “Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.” —Alan Turing, The Imitation Game
108. “The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
109. “Just because you make a good plan, doesn’t mean that’s what’s gonna happen.” ― Taylor Swift, singer and songwriter
110. “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” – Estée Lauder
111. “Days are expensive. When you spend a day you have one less day to spend. So make sure you spend each one wisely.”
112. “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” – John F. Kennedy
113. “Chase the vision, not the money. The money will end up following you.” —Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos (Click to tweet)
114. “I learned to always take on things I’d never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist.” - Virginia Rometty, former chairman, president and CEO of IBM
115. “People think innovation is just having a good idea, but a lot of it is just moving quickly and trying a lot of things.” - Mark Zuckerberg
116. “An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing.”
117. “If you’re segmenting based on gender and your target audience is made up of all the genders, then make sure that people from all the genders form a part of your study. This way, you will get more accurate results.”
118. “Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.” ― Henry David Thoreau, essayist and poet
119. “Life-fulfilling work is never about the money—when you feel true passion for something, you instinctively find ways to nurture it.” - Eileen Fisher, fashion designer and founder of Eileen Fisher Inc
120. “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” - Estée Lauder
121. “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”
122. “If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.”
123. “Building a brand means knowing your story and building and sharing that story”—Tamara McCleary
124. “…everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future.” ― Chaim Potok, author
125. “The more time you spend contemplating what you should have done… you lose valuable time planning what you can and will do.” ― Lil Wayne, rapper
126. “By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.”
127. “Know what your customer want most and what your company does best. Focus on where those two meet.”
128. “Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.” —Conrad Hilton, founder of the Hilton Hotels chain
129. “I was taught to strive not because there were any guarantees of success but because the act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.”
130. “The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, writer/statesman
131. “Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” —Will Rogers, performer
132. “There’s this joy that comes from sitting down to solve a problem and standing up when it’s done and good. Building a company or managing people is never just done.” - Drew Houston
133. “If your business is not on the internet then your business will be out of business.”
134. “Customer experience is a catalyst of transformation. It directly impacts culture, strategy, structure and all parts of a business.” – Christine Crandell
135. “An ‘unintended pregnancy’ could be a wonderful surprise, not planned but welcome. Why should the government be in the business of ‘preventing’ a surprising but welcome pregnancy.” — Wendy Wright
136. “Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.” —Og Mandino, author
137. “You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can’t, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don’t give up.” ―Chuck Yeager, former US Air Force officer
138. “Be passionate and move forward with gusto every single hour of every single day, until you reach your goal.” - Ava DuVernay, filmmaker
139. “Planning for success will make you even more creative.” ~ Danielle LaPorte
140. “Timing, perseverance, and 10 years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.” —Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter (Click to tweet)
141. “In the end, every startup is different. But in the beginning every startup is the same.”
142. “Your Customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
143. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.” - Zig Ziglar, author, salesman, and motivational speaker
144. “If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.”
145. “A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.” ~ Confucius
146. “Always plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.” ― Richard Cushing, American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church
147. “Fortunes are built during the down market and collected in the upmarket.” —Jason Calacanis, founder of LAUNCH Ticker (Click to tweet)
148. “When you want to study a larger group of people, surveys become a good option.”
149. “Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” —H. Jackson Brown Jr., US author
150. “Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.” ― Robert H. Schuller, author and televangelist
151. I had long planned to start a foundation. I wanted to do something with long-range benefit to humanity. Starting a business and making a lot of money doesn't make for a fulfilling life. - Author: Fred Kavli
152. “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” – John F. Kennedy, 35th U.S. president
153. “Make something people want” includes making a company that people want to work for.”
154. “If you wake up deciding what you want to give versus what you’re going to get, you become a more successful person. In other words, if you want to make money, you have to help someone else make money.” - Russell Simmons, co-founder of Def Jam Recordings
155. “The more time you spend contemplating what you should have done…you lose valuable time planning what you can and will do.” – Lil Wayne
156. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill Gates, Co-founder of Microsoft
157. “It is not the genius at the top giving directions that makes people great. It is great people that make the guy at the top look like a genius.” - Simon Sinek, author and motivational speaker
158. “If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.” —Pierre Omidyar, founder and chairman of eBay
159. “When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” —Paulo Coelho, lyricist and novelist
160. “Take risks. Failure is a stepping stone to success.”
161. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” —Samuel Beckett, Irish avant-garde novelist and playwright
162. “Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.” - Napoleon Hill
163. “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” —Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft (Click to tweet)
164. “I learned to always take on things I’d never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist.” - Virginia Rometty
165. “If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, it’s too large.” —Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon (Click to tweet)
166. “The reason that everybody likes planning is that nobody has to do anything.” ~ Jerry Brown
167. “Always plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.” – Richard Cushing
168. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” —Henry David Thoreau, essayist, poet, and philosopher
169. “Every problem is a gift — without problems we would not grow.” – Tony Robbins, motivational speaker and writer
170. “All humans are entrepreneurs, not because they should start companies, but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA, and creation is the essence of entrepreneurship.” - Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
171. “Today’s accomplishments were yesterday’s impossibilities.” —Robert H. Schuller, motivational speaker
172. “A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.” – Confucius
173. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
174. “probably contributes to an explanation of why people litigate, why they start wars, and why they open small businesses.”
175. “Every time we launch a feature, people yell at us.” —Angelo Sotira, co-founder of deviantART (Click to tweet)
176. “I ain’t Martin Luther King. I don’t need a dream. I have a plan.” ― Spike Lee, actor and director
177. “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” ~ Thomas Edison
178. “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” – Yogi Berra
179. “Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.” —Les Brown, motivational speaker, author, and former politician
180. “If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs.”
181. “And if the end result is that someone, somewhere winds up believing they can do something out of the ordinary, well, then you’ve really made it.” ― Angela Ahrendts
182. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
183. “I always say don’t make plans, make options.” ~ Jennifer Aniston
184. “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” Confucius
185. “The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.”
186. “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” – Michael Leboeuf
187. “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” ~ Leonard Bernstein
188. “You never achieve real success unless you like what you are doing.”
189. “Satisfaction is a rating. Loyalty is a brand.”
190. “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
191. “Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.” Sigmund Freud, Neurologist
192. “Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.” ― Winston Churchill, former British Prime Minister
193. “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” - Jim Rohn, entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker
194. “Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
195. “Never begin the day until it is finished on paper.” ― Jim Rohn, entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker
196. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” - Albert Einstein
197. “No great achiever—even those who made it seem easy—ever succeeded without hard work.” —Jonathan Sacks, author and politician
198. “You don’t need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.” —Larry Page, co-founder of Google (Click to tweet)
199. “It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” —Scott Belsky, co-founder of Behance (Click to tweet)
200. “I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.”
201. “There are dreamers and there are planners; the planners make their dreams come true.” ~ Edwin Louis Cole
202. “A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.” ― Confucius, Chinese philosopher
203. “Speaking from my personal experiences, setting goals, along with a detailed action plan, has actually changed my life from one cast in frustration to one of purpose.” ~ Catherine Pulsifer
204. “We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.” —Maya Angelou, poet, singer, and civil rights activist
205. “There are no working hours for leaders.”
206. “There should be no boundaries to human endeavor. We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. While there’s life, there is hope.” —Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything
207. “Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” ~ Gloria Steinem
208. “When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.” —Josh James, CEO and co-founder of Omniture (Click to tweet)
209. “Above all, success in business requires two things: a winning competitive strategy, and superb organizational execution. Distrust is the enemy of both.” I submit that while high trust won’t necessarily rescue a poor strategy, low trust will almost always derail a good one.”
210. “Sometimes, when we need detailed information to solve a business problem, we need to gather data from external sources.”
211. “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.” ― Peter F. Drucker, author and educator
212. “Action is the foundational key to all success.”
213. “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” - Henry Ford
214. “Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It's the mastery of fear. It's about getting up one more time than we fall down.” - Arianna Huffington
215. “I never dreamed about success, I worked for it.” —Estee Lauder, founder of Estee Lauder Cosmetics (Click to tweet)
216. “Every problem is a gift — without problems we would not grow.” – Anthony Robbins, motivational speaker and writer
217. “Don’t count the days, Make the days count.”
218. “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
219. “I like to say it’s an attitude of not just thinking outside the box, but not even seeing the box.”― Safra A. Catz
220. “We entrepreneurs are loners, vagabonds, troublemakers. Success is simply a matter of finding and surrounding ourselves with those open-minded and clever souls who can take our insanity and put it to good use.”
221. “Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action.” ― Napoleon Hill, author
222. “Many companies get trapped by the paradox of hitting numbers ‘now’ versus improving sales for future quarters or years ahead.” – Tiffani Bova, growth and innovation evangelist, Salesforce
223. “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
224. “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
225. “Get a mentor in the applicable field if you’re at all unsure of what you’re looking for.” —Kyle Bragger, founder of Forrst and co-founder of Exposure (Click to tweet)
226. “The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs … one step at a time.” —Joe Girard, salesman
227. “If you have more than 3 priorities then you don’t have any.” Jim Collins
228. “Don’t be cocky. Don’t be flashy. There’s always someone better than you.” —Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos (Click to tweet)
229. “People don’t take opportunities because the timing is bad, the financial side unsecure. Too many people are overanalyzing. Sometimes you just have to go for it.” - Michelle Zatlyn, Co-founder, President, and COO of Cloudflare
230. “Planning is a skill and an art which takes a lifetime to master.”
231. “Success is a decision. Dare to choose it.”
232. “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” - Winston Churchill
233. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
234. “A person who is quietly confident makes the best leader.” —Fred Wilson, co-founder of Union Square Ventures (Click to tweet)
235. “Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they’ll come back. We have to be great every time or we’ll lose them.”
236. “And I’d say one of the great lessons I’ve learned over the past couple of decades, from a management perspective, is that really, when you come down to it, it really is all about people and all about leadership.” - Steve Case, former CEO of AOL
237. “Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.” ~ Tom Landry
238. “The well-satisfied customer will bring the repeat sale that counts.”
239. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
240. “No plan ever failed due to good planning.” ~ Jury Nel
241. “I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.” - Madam C.J. Walker, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and social activist
242. “Great men are not born great, they grow great.” —Vito Corleone, The Godfather
243. “Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.” - Anthony J. D'Angelo
244. “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” – Pablo Picasso
245. “Business magazines and newspapers are very frequently publishing data that can prove very useful for market research. You can access the physical or the online versions of these reports.”
246. “Education costs money. But then so does ignorance.” —Sir Claus Moser, statistician
247. “I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.” —Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft
248. “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” —Ferris Bueller, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
249. “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
250. “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
251. “Focus groups for business projects are kind of the same. In this, you are going to collect data from a group of your customers or potential customers rather than your friends.”
252. “It’s very easy to be different but very difficult to be better.” – Jonathan Ive, former chief design officer, Apple
253. “Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.” ― Tom Landry, Hall of Fame football coach
254. “Stay self-funded as long as possible.” —Garrett Camp, founder of Expa, Uber, and StumbleUpon (Click to tweet)
255. “You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.” —Sam Levenson, humorist
256. “The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much energy as the first 90%.” —Rob Kalin, founder of Etsy (Click to tweet)
257. “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” ―Oprah Winfrey, media proprietor
258. “A good plan is like a road map: it shows the final destination and usually the best way to get there.” ~ H. Stanely Judd
259. “Employees want to feel inspired by their leaders…hire individuals who will lead by example.” – Jody Kohner, EVP global enablement, Salesforce
260. “We have a very diverse environment and a very inclusive culture, and those characteristics got us through the tough times. Diversity generated a better strategy, better risk management, better debates, and better outcomes.” — Alan Joyce, Business Executive and Chief Executive Officer of Qantas Airways.
261. “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.” ~ Peter F. Drucker
262. “Census surveys are used by the government to collect information about the residents of a country”
263. “As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.” ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery
264. “Business opportunities are like buses: there’s always another one coming.” - Richard Branson
265. “Lean in, speak out, have a voice in your organization, and never use the word, ‘sorry’.” ―Trish Bertuzzi
266. “Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk, whether it’s starting a new business, whether it’s leaving home, whether it’s getting married, or whether it’s flying in space.” – Chris Hadfield, astronaut
267. “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
268. “A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.” ― Brian Tracy, author and motivational speaker
269. “Don’t deliver a product, deliver an experience.”
270. “The man who has confidence in himself gains the confidence of others.”
271. “I am a person who continually destroys the possibilities of a future because of the numbers of alternative viewpoints I can focus on the present.” ― Doris Lessing, author of The Golden Notebook
272. “Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.” – Andy Rooney, journalist
273. “Your value will be not what you know; it will be what you share.”― Ginni Rometty
274. “When I was growing up I always wanted to be someone. Now I realize I should have been more specific.” Lily Tomlin
275. “Don’t ever make decisions based on fear. Make decisions based on hope and possibility. Make decisions based on what should happen, not what shouldn’t.”
276. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
277. “An obstacle is often a stepped stone.”
278. “I don’t think just trying to maximise profits is a very good long-term strategy for a business. It doesn’t inspire the people who work for you.” – John Mackey
279. “You have to spend a lot of time with your customers and competitors to know what’s going on in their lives. You don’t want to be the last one to know that your customers’ needs have changed and now they want to break up with your brand.”
280. “Do what you love and success will follow. Passion is the fuel behind a successful career.”―Meg Whitman
281. “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
282. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
283. “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” - Coco Chanel
284. “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” ~ Confucius
285. “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” – Albert Schweitzer
286. “I got lucky because I never gave up the search. Are you quitting too soon? Or are you willing to pursue luck with a vengeance too?”― Jill Konrath
287. “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” —Colin Powell, US statesman and retired four-star general in the United States Army
288. “People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously.”
289. “Step out of the history that is holding you back. Step into the new story you are willing to create.” —Oprah Winfrey, media proprietor (Click to tweet)
290. “I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.” —Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father of the United States
291. “I use social media as an idea generator, trend mapper, and strategic compass for all of our online business ventures.” — Paul Barron, CEO, Foodable Network
292. “Whenever we collect data from the original source ourselves, the data gained in the process is known as the primary data.”
293. “A dream does not become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work.” —Colin Powell, US statesman and retired four-star general in the United States Army
294. “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, writer and pioneering aviator
295. “When you serve the customer better, they always return on your investment.”
296. “Whatever you do, be different—that was the advice my mother gave me, and I can’t think of better advice for an entrepreneur. If you’re different, you will stand out.” - Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop
297. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Edison
298. “Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.”
299. “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” - Albert Einstein
300. “It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.” ~ Roger von Oech
301. “Do what you love and success will follow. Passion is the fuel behind a successful career.”
302. “Great customer service is a critical competitive advantage for a business.”
303. “You can and should set your own limits and clearly articulate them. This takes courage, but it is also liberating and empowering, and often earns you new respect.” - Rosalind Brewer, CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance
304. “The more segmentation you do, the more groups will be formed and your sample size will increase in response to that.”
305. “My advice for anyone thinking of starting their own business is, above all, don’t wait. If you get an idea in the shower in the morning, try to make it the next day.” - Harley Finkelstein
306. “In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love.” - Warren Buffett
307. “Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.” —Michael Jordan, former professional basketball player
308. “An ‘unintended pregnancy’ could be a wonderful surprise, not planned but welcome. Why should the government be in the business of ‘preventing’ a surprising but welcome pregnancy?”
309. “Learning from each mistake requires self-awareness and humility, but it can be one of the biggest keys to reaching your full potential.”
310. “It’s important that leaders are consistent. You can change your mind, but change your mind against a consistent framework.”
311. “I definitely see a correlation between how many things a company gets right and how fast a company grows.” - Garrett Camp, co-founder of Uber
312. “Small opportunities are often beginning of great achievements.”
313. “There is nothing like a concrete life plan to weigh you down. Because if you always have one eye on some future goal, you stop paying attention to the job at hand, miss opportunities that might arise, and stay fixedly on one path, even when a better, newer course might have opened up.” ― Indra Nooyi
314. “Capital isn’t scarce. Vision is.”
315. “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” ― John F. Kennedy, former U.S. President
316. “Someday is not a day of the week.” —Janet Dailey, author
317. “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”
318. “Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.” ~ Fitzhugh Dodson
319. “Get five or six of your smartest friends in a room and ask them to rate your idea.” —Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga (Click to tweet)
320. “I do not know the word ‘quit.’ Either I never did, or I have abolished it.” – Susan Butcher, sled dog racer
321. “Before you start your research, you need to know where to look for that data.”
322. “You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don’t believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can’t possibly foresee now.” ~ Harry S. Truman
323. “Planning is a process of choosing among those many options. If we do not choose to plan, then we choose to have others plan for us.” ~ Richard I. Winwood
324. “Whatever you do, don’t play it safe. Don’t do things the way they’ve always been done. Don't try to fit the system. If you do what's expected of you, you’ll never accomplish more than others expect.” - Howard Schultz
325. “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” ~ George S. Patton
326. “A big business starts small.”
327. “Every moment is a fresh beginning.” T.S. Eliot, Poet
328. “If you’re changing the world, you’re working on important things. You’re excited to get up in the morning.” - Larry Page, CEO of Google
329. “Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.” ― Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
330. “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”
331. “Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble-making individual.” - Natalie Clifford Barney, playwright and novelist
332. “I ain’t Martin Luther King. I don’t need a dream. I have a plan.” – Spike Lee
333. “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” —Aristotle, father of Western philosophy
334. “Great things in business are never done by one person.”
335. ”Nobody is gonna hit as hard as life, but it ain’t how hard you can hit. It’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. It’s how much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.” —Rocky, Rocky Balboa
336. “Business is all about relationships, how well you build them determines how well they build your business.”
337. “I think it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. Since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition.” - Larry Page
338. “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” ―Sara Blakely
339. “The sample size is also going to depend on how well you can divide your target market into various groups. Make sure you take everything into consideration while forming your groups.”
340. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” ―George Bernard Shaw, playwrighter
341. “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” ~ John F. Kennedy
342. “The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.” —Colin R. Davis, conductor for the London Symphony Orchestra
343. “The ability to stick around for a long time, without wiping out or being forced to give up, is what makes the biggest difference. This should be the cornerstone of your strategy, whether it’s in investing or your career or a business you own.”
344. “The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first." – Sergey Brin, co-founder, Google
345. “Customer service is an opportunity to exceed your customer’s expectations.”
346. “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anaïs Nin
347. “Find a truly original idea. It is the only way I will ever distinguish myself. It is the only way I will ever matter.” —John Nash, A Beautiful Mind
348. “One dad struggled to save a few dollars. The other created investments. One dad taught me how to write an impressive resumé so I could find a good job. The other taught me how to write strong business and financial plans so I could create jobs.”
349. “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” Babe Ruth, Baseball Player
350. “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”
351. “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” ~ Warren Buffett
352. “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” —Michael Jordan, former professional basketball player
353. “Too many companies believe people are interchangeable. Truly gifted people never are. They have unique talents. Such people cannot be forced into roles they are not suited for, nor should they be. Effective leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do.”
354. “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” Ken Blanchard
355. “If you can dream it, you can do it.”
356. “Government organizations are also regularly sharing a lot of data, which can be used for market research.”
357. “Data beats emotions.” —Sean Rad, founder of Tinder (Click to tweet)
358. “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” ― Pablo Picasso, painter
359. “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”
360. “Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.” —Benjamin Button, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
361. “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower, former U.S. President
362. “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” —Maximus, Gladiator
363. “Not every single broke and unemployed person needs a job; some need customers.”
364. “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anaïs Nin, writer
365. “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein
366. “Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.” —Dale Carnegie, writer
367. “Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” —Golda Meir, fourth Prime Minister of Israel (Click to tweet)
368. “The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and to influence their actions.”
369. “The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.” ~ Ronald Reagan
370. “Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.” – Sigmund Freud, neurologist
371. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln
372. “Life is short, and it’s up to you to make it sweet.” - Sadie Delany, educator and civil rights pioneer
373. “Someone I once knew wrote that we walk away from our dreams afraid that we may fail, or worse yet, afraid we may succeed.” —Forrester, Finding Forrester
374. “There is simply no substitute for hard work when it comes to achieving success.” —Heather Bresch, CEO of Mylan
375. “When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’” —Sydney Harris, journalist
376. “An entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and a want to create.” —David Karp, founder, and CEO of Tumblr (Click to tweet)
377. “Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.” —Charles R. Swindoll, author, educator, and radio preacher
378. “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” ― Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father of the United States
379. “Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
380. “Try not to have a very small sample size. Because if your sample size is very small, you will end up excluding a lot of people from your studies who should form a part of it.”
381. “Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.” —Howard Schultz, interim CEO of Starbucks (Click to tweet)
382. “It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.”
383. “Every man dies, but not every man really lives.” —William Wallace, Braveheart
384. “There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.” —Ray Goforth, director of strategy and partnerships at Spredfast
385. “In the journey of entrepreneurship, tenacity of purpose is supreme.”
386. “Always try to connect your decision-making to some sort of data. If you don’t have data, start a market research project and gain data on that topic. Don’t make any decision just on the basis of your “intuition.”
387. “Most ideas are born and lost in isolation.”
388. “Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rodgers
389. “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” - Elon Musk
390. “Don’t count the days, make the days count.” —Muhammad Ali, professional boxer
391. “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” —Helen Keller, US author, political activist, and lecturer (Click to tweet)
392. “We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in.” - Arianna Huffington
393. “The more I want to get something done ,the less I call it work.” —Richard Bach, writer
394. “Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.” - Oprah Winfrey
395. “Your career is your business, as a CEO of your own career company, it is important to manage your company in the right direction with proper planning and executions to achieve your goals.”
396. “Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.” —Michael Dell, chairman, and CEO of Dell (Click to tweet)
397. “Everything in life has some risk, and what you have to actually learn to do is how to navigate it.” - Reid Hoffman
398. “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” —Steve Jobs, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. (Click to tweet)
399. “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” —Japanese proverb
400. “Patience is the art of concealing your impatience.”
401. “Strategy is not about competing for the present, but competing for the future. It’s about understanding that non-linear change means anticipating & appealing to customer discontinuity.” Vijay Gvindarajan
402. “A goal should scare you a little, and excite you A LOT.” Joe Vitale
403. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” - Henry Ford
404. The foundation of Ontario's economy is our skilled workers and innovative companies. Our government will continue its proactive approach to partnering with business and industry, investing strategically to help companies grow and create jobs in this period of economic uncertainty. - Author: Brad Duguid
405. “It’s time for you to move, realizing that the thing you are seeking is also seeking you.” - Iyanla Vanzant, inspirational speaker
406. “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” - Bill Gates
407. “It's stunning to me what kind of an impact even one person can have if they have the right passion, perspective, and are able to align the interest of a great team.” - Steve Case
408. “One of the best things you can do is stop and listen; that’s why it’s good to not just immediately respond when someone talks to you. Just stop and make sure you internalized what they said.”—Lori Richardson
409. “If you want to grow you have to do something different from the majority of people.”
410. “Challenges are what make life interesting, and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” —Joshua J. Marine, author
411. “Stay true to yourself and your vision. Don’t let any one person’s opinion move you; listen, but be confident.”―Amanda Kahlow
412. “There is no substitute for hard work.” —Thomas Edison, entrepreneur and inventor
413. “To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.”
414. “Chance favors the prepared mind.”~ Louis Pasteur
415. “There’s nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team.” —Jason Fried, 37signals founder and co-author of Rework (Click to tweet)
416. “Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.”
417. “We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.” ― Arianna Huffington
418. “So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.” - Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr
419. “The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.” —Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn (Click to tweet)
420. “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” Winston Churchill
421. “If the plan doesn’t work change the plan, not the goal.”
422. “You will be defined not just by what you achieve, but by how you survive.”―Sheryl Sandberg
423. “The trouble with many plans is that they are based on the way things are now. To be successful, your personal plan must focus on what you want, not what you have.” ― Nido Qubein, president of High Point University
424. A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all. – Michael LeBoeuf, Business author and former management professor
425. “You must not only aim right but draw the bow with all your might.”
426. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” —Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company (Click to tweet)
427. “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Dwight Eisenhower
428. “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.”
429. “Tough times never last, but tough people do.”
430. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18
431. “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.” Leonard Bernstein
432. “In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination.” —Steve Case, co-founder of AOL (Click to tweet)
433. “If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough.” ~ Edward Everett Hale
434. “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all” – Michael LeBoeuf
435. “I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.” ― Marissa Mayer
436. “Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things different from everybody else.” —Sara Blakely, founder of SPANX (Click to tweet)
437. “Where do you put the fear when you choose to innovate? The fear is there, but you have to find a place to put it.”
438. “With the furious pace of change in business today, difficulty to manage relationships sabotages more business than anything else – it is not a question of strategy that gets us into trouble, it’s a question of emotions.”
439. “Every day that we spent not improving our products was a wasted day.” —Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Stack Overflow (Click to tweet)
440. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” ― Abraham Lincoln, former U.S. President
441. “If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” —Jim Rohn, entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker
442. “It takes seriousness to get serious things done.”
443. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin
444. “The self-employed need business strategies that are relationship-based, not transactional, authentic to who you are, and right-sized for small business.”
445. “Don’t pass up something that’s attractive today because you think you will find something better tomorrow.” - Warren Buffett
446. “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof.” ~ Shannon Alder
447. “Always think outside the box and embrace opportunities that appear, wherever they might be.” —Lakshmi Mittal, chairman & CEO of ArcelorMittal (Click to tweet)
448. “To be successful, you must act big, think big and talk big.”
449. “Anything that is measured and watched improves.” —Bob Parsons, founder of GoDaddy (Click to tweet)
450. “Instability is the repetition of tactics without a strategy.”
451. “... rich dad talked with his bankers, accountants, attorneys, stockbrokers, real estate brokers. financial planners, and insurance agents. It was the beginning of my business education.”
452. “Good planning without good working is nothing.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
453. “Longevity is a fleeting moment that lasts forever.”
454. “Don’t play games that you don’t understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them.” —Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos (Click to tweet)
455. “If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business.”
456. “Business is the salt of life.”
457. “In the face of uncertainties, planning defines the particular place you want to be and how you intend to get there.” Peter Drucker
458. “Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.” – William Durant
459. “Have a bias towards action – let’s see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away.” ~ Indira Gandhi
460. “The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.” —Harry Golden, writer
461. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”
462. “I got lucky because I never gave up the search. Are you quitting too soon? Or are you willing to pursue luck with a vengeance too?”
463. “Have a bias towards action – let’s see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away.” – Indira Gandhi
464. “So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.” —Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr
465. “Diligence is the mother of good luck.” —Benjamin Franklin, a Founding Father of the United States (Click to tweet)
466. “If you can push through that feeling of being scared, that feeling of taking a risk, really amazing things can happen.” —Marissa Mayer, former president and CEO of Yahoo!
467. “Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.”
468. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney, co-founder of the Walt Disney Company
469. “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” ― Thomas Edison, inventor
470. “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” - Thomas Edison
471. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” ~ Charles Darwin
472. “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” ― Leonard Bernstein, composer and conductor
473. “As a CEO, I am finding that I have to become a learning CEO. I have to go to school all the time because I am learning new skills that I need to run this company and I am realising that I am not equipped to just coast. I have to constantly renew my skills.” - Indra Nooyi, former CEO of Pepsi
474. “You are on the eve of a complete victory. You can’t go wrong. The world is behind you.” - Josephine Baker, entertainer and civil rights activist
475. “The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.” —Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of the Wall Street
476. “Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.” - Jim Rohn
477. “The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do.”
478. “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” —Steve Jobs, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Apple Inc.
479. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” - Walt Disney
480. “Some people dream of success, while other people get up every morning and make it happen.” —Wayne Huizenga, prolific US business person. (Click to tweet)
481. “The reason that everybody likes planning is that nobody has to do anything.” – Jerry Brown
482. “However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.” —Stephen Hawking, English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author
483. “Your willingness to look at your darkness is what empowers you to change.”
484. “We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in.”
485. “The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it’s so easy to be motivated.” - Jeff Bezos
486. “Just because you made a good plan, doesn’t mean that’s what’s gonna happen.” Taylor Swift
487. “The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall.” - Vince Lombardi, football coach and NFL executive
488. “A full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.” - Mark Twain
489. “You change your business plan to anticipate and adapt to changes in the marketplace.” – Jon Feltheimer
490. “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
491. “Lean forward into your life. Begin each day as if it were on purpose.” ―Mary Anne Radmacher, author
492. “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.” – Peter F. Drucker
493. “Plan your next move because every step contributes towards your goal.” ― Sukant Ratnakar, author and motivational speaker
494. “There’s no luck in business. There’s only drive, determination and more drive.”
495. “Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations.” - Mae Jemison
496. “You never lose a dream. It just incubates as a hobby.”
497. “You have to believe in yourself when no one else does – that makes you a winner right there.”
498. “Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet and essayist
499. “Listen, smile, agree, and then do whatever you were gonna do anyway.“ —Robert Downey Jr., actor
500. “Just because you made a good plan, doesn’t mean that’s what’s gonna happen.” ~ Taylor Swift
501. “When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say, ‘Wow, that was an adventure,’ not, ‘Wow, I sure felt safe.’” —Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder of Github
502. “I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.” - Marissa Mayer, co-founder of Sunshine Contact
503. “If the data reveals that your customers are unhappy with your product, then not making a decision to improve your product is a waste of your resources and time spent on learning this.”
504. “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” —William Feather, publisher and author
505. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
506. “All you have in business is your reputation – So it’s very important that you keep your work.”
507. “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”
508. “Don’t find fault. Find a remedy.”
509. “From a young age, I learned to focus on the things I was good at and delegate to others what I was not good at. That’s how Virgin is run. Fantastic people throughout the Virgin Group run our businesses, allowing me to think creatively and strategically.”
510. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” - Henry David Thoreau
511. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
512. “I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.” ― Benjamin Disraeli, British politician and author
513. “Make each day your masterpiece.” —John Wooden, basketball player
514. “Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves—their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.” - Peter Drucker, management consultant, educator, and author
515. Read Starting By: Jonathan Michael
516. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu, Chinese Taoist philosopher
517. “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
518. “Small business, you can give them capital, but when they often need as much is mentoring, advice, and help with their business plan.” - Karen Mills
519. “There’s no shortage of remarkable ideas, what’s missing is the will to execute them.” – Seth Godin
520. “An idea can only become a reality once it is broken down into organized, actionable elements.” - Scott Belsky
521. “Effectively, change is almost impossible without industry-wide collaboration, cooperation and consensus.”
522. “No matter what, expect the unexpected. And whenever possible, be the unexpected.” - Lynda Barry, cartoonist, author, and motivational speaker
523. “You have to work on the business first before it works for you.”
524. “Thinking well to be wise: planning well, wiser: doing well, wisest and best of all.” ~ Malcom Forbes
525. “Every problem is a gift—without problems we would not grow.” – Anthony Robbins
526. “The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.” —Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States
527. “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.” —Babe Ruth, professional baseball player
528. “In order to succeed. We must first believe that we can.”
529. “I’ve always been a bit of an introvert, but just because you don’t fit the classic mold doesn’t mean you can’t be a leader. You just need to find your own style and someone with a similar style who you can learn from.”― Jess Lee
530. “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.” - Seth Godin
531. “Bet on your strengths. It’s an underrated business strategy in a world where so many people are obsessed with fixing their weaknesses they give short shrift to the skills they were born with.”
532. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” - Thomas Edison
533. “I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity.” – Oprah Winfrey
534. “Dedicate yourself to a core set of values. Without them, you will never be able to find personal fulfillment, and you will never be able to lead effectively.”
535. “The only way around is through.” – Robert Frost
536. “No amount of pre-call planning is going to help close business if you aren’t able to ask for what you need in order to conduct business. It’s a classic case of working on the wrong end of the problem.” – Colleen Stanley
537. “LinkedIn is a channel to increase, not a tool to replace, your networking efforts, and it is an excellent vehicle to facilitate some facets of your marketing and business strategies.” – Viveka vonRosen (@LinkedInExpert)
538. “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T.S. Eliot, author
539. “Customers may forget what you said but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.”
540. “By Failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin
541. “If you start thinking that only your biggest and shiniest moments count, you're setting yourself up to feel like a failure most of the time.”
542. “Plans are things that don’t change.” ~ Fujio Cho
543. “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”
544. “The accident is your training. Life is a choice. You can choose to be a victim or anything else you’d like to be.” —Socrates, Peaceful Warrior
545. “The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.”
546. “Four steps to achievement: Plan purposely. Prepare prayerfully. Proceed positively. Pursue persistently.” ~ William A. Ward
547. “If you are working on something that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.” —Steve Jobs, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Apple Inc.
548. “I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.” —G. K. Chesterton, writer, poet, and philosopher
549. “Don’t take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give—with a few exceptions—generalize whatever they did. Don’t over-analyze everything. I myself have been guilty of over-thinking problems. Just build things and find out if they work.” —Ben Silbermann, founder of Pinterest (Click to tweet)
550. “There is no better measure of your values than how you spend your time.” - Scott Belsky, co-founder of Behance
551. “No more romanticizing about how cool it is to be an entrepreneur. It’s a struggle to save your company’s life—and your own skin—every day of the week.” —Spencer Fry, co-founder of CarbonMade (Click to tweet)
552. “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” —Drew Houston, founder and CEO of Dropbox
553. “The trouble with many plans is that they are based on the way things are now. To be successful, your personal plan must focus on what you want, not what you have. ~ Nido Qubein
554. “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” —Earl Nightingale, radio speaker and author
555. “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.”
556. “Sprinkle a little bit of passion on a good idea, and then spread some crunchy business plan, and you have got a gold mine.”
557. “Plan for what is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is still small.” ~ Sun Tzu
558. “Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I’ve met people who don’t want to try for fear of failing.” —J.K. Rowling, novelist
559. “Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.” ~ Napoleon Hill
560. “At the end of the day, you are the only one that is limiting your ability to dream, or to actually execute on your dreams. Don’t let yourself get in the way of that.”― Falon Fatemi
561. “Nothing works better than just improving your product.” —Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Stack Overflow (Click to tweet)
562. “Enduring great companies preserve their core values and purpose while their business strategies and operating practices endlessly adapt to a changing world. This is the magical combination of “preserve the core and stimulate progress.”
563. “Plan for what is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is small.” – Sun Tzu
564. “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth." – John F. Kennedy, 35th president of the United States of America
565. “It always seems impossible, until it is done.”
566. “Business has only two functions – marketing and Innovation.”
567. “Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don’t fight them. Just find a new way to stand.” - Oprah Winfrey
568. “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” —Les Brown, motivational speaker
569. “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffett
570. “The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.” – Sergey Brin, co-founder, Google
571. “your contingency plan is as important as your business plan.”
572. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” —Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
573. “There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.” ~ Douglas H. Everett
574. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: The fear of failure.”