Shark Tank’s Lori Griener opts out of investing when something doesn’t excite her. It doesn’t matter if the product is a hero. Growing a business is hard work. Growing a business that you don’t enjoy is twice as hard.
The most successful and happiest small business owners are the ones who are passionate about their business. Far too many people pick a business based on what will make easy money or the latest greatest thing regardless how they feel about the business. They see dollar signs and quick growth.
They burn out, get bored, and feel sluggish every day they come to work. Even a moneymaker takes time to cultivate before the cash pours in. When you deal with something you don’t care about for hours each day, it wears you out.
You may be passionate about your business. And that’s great. Still, businesses require consistent, committed effort to succeed. You must find a way to maintain your passion for the long haul.
One useful way to do this is to start your day by reading a few inspirational quotes. These short, powerful nuggets of wisdom take seconds to read as they’re usually one to two lines long. Wise and inspirational quotes somehow have the ability to get your mind churning and thinking about the positive instead of the negative.
Although we all live completely unique lives, there’s still something about quotes that speak to all of us. Here are quotes sorted by categories based on where you need inspiration.
Bad days
“Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have — life itself.” — Walter Anderson
“You have to remember that the hard days are what make you stronger. The bad days make you realize what a good day is. If you never had any bad days, you would never have that sense of accomplishment!” — Aly Raisman
“When you are in business for a long time, you go through good times and bad times. When you go through bad times, you learn to control costs, satisfy customers better, satisfy employees better and become more transparent. Therefore, you build character in the company.” — N. R. Narayana Murthy
Change
“It is never too late to be who you might have been.” — George Eliot
“It is of practical value to learn to like yourself. Since you must spend so much time with yourself you might as well get some satisfaction out of the relationship.” — Norman Vincent Peale
“Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.” — Jack Welch
For days when you need a push
“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” — Winston Churchill
“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” — Robert Schuller
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” — Ayn Rand
Leadership
“Research indicates that employees have three prime needs: Interesting work, recognition for doing a good job, and being let in on things that are going on in the company.” — Zig Ziglar
“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.” — Max de Pree
“People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.” — Theodore Roosevelt
Making the most of your time
“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” — Mae West
“Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.” — Peter Drucker
“I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.” — Golda Meir
Money
“If you want to reap financial blessings, you have to sow financially.” — Joel Osteen
“My goal wasn’t to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers.” — Steve Wozniak
“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.” — Robert Frost
Priorities
“Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.” — Tony Robbins
“Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.” – Stephen Covey
“Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.” — H. L. Hunt
Setbacks
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” —Colin Powell
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.” — J. K. Rowling
“Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.” —Thomas A. Edison
Share a favorite quote in the comments.
Image credit: Mark Chadwick