business successful journey

Entrepreneur Story: The Journey of Starting a Business

Starting a business? Get tips from seasoned entrepreneurs who’ve seen, heard, and done it all. Read on!

Who doesn’t want to be their own boss? Entrepreneurship sounds like a dream; you make your own hours, you’re free to be creative, and you get all the profit. But what most people don’t see is that there’s a large amount of work cut out to make that dream a reality. In fact, it can be a nightmare.

Let’s look into the reality of a business dream. The ups and downs, the struggle and failures, the losses, and eventually, the gains. The journey to starting a business is rough. An entrepreneur story is not at all a fairytale. But it sure is worthwhile.

As Andrew Morgan of Marknology explains it, “Entrepreneurs are scared of all types of stuff and deal with more fear than most people. They just fear not trying at all.”

To understand how entrepreneurship works , let’s first define it.

Related Video: Why Do You Want to Start a Startup?

What is an entrepreneur?

According to Webster’s Dictionary , an entrepreneur is someone who “organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.” Simply put, it’s an individual who owns and runs a business. And this person takes full responsibility for the company.

The most common characteristics of an entrepreneur are someone innovative, creative, resourceful, and a risk-taker. Most successful founders share traits of passion, integrity, and discipline. Lastly, as a startup owner, you need to brave through storms; so, resilience is key.   

Related Video: What is an Entrepreneur?

The Art of Starting a Business

When it comes to sharing your startup story, you have to start from the beginning. Entrepreneurs weren’t always entrepreneurs; they had their origin story. And you have to tell your once-upon-a-time tale too.

A powerful entrepreneur story is a strong selling point of a business. That’s why you need to be aware of your own. Kick things off by answering the question, why do you want to be an entrepreneur ? You can take inspiration from other startup stories. Here are some of the reasons people start a business:

1. They’re ambitious and want to make a difference

Lauren Conaway saw that there was a disproportionate number of women in the tech field. To spark change in the otherwise male-dominated work industries throughout Kansas City, she started InnovateHerKC to provide inclusive support for women leaders and professionals.

The members aim to provide resources, mentorship, support, collaboration, and opportunities for women in business. The goal of InnovateHerKC is to cultivate a sphere of influence to deepen the impact of professional women in the Kansas City community.

2. They have a solution to a problem

The cannabis business has always been tricky. Because of the controversies surrounding it, cannabis products aren’t easy to buy and are even harder to sell. For the power couple, Heather and Kyle Steppe saw this as a challenge.

They founded KC Hemp Co to make CBD products more accessible. They want to educate people on the cannabis plant and how it works for natural healing. Initially, they put up a physical store, but when the Covid19 pandemic hit, they had to pivot by selling online.

Watch how the Steppe’s moved from brick and mortar to marketplace sales in Startup Hustle TV Episode 5 . Today, their online shop is a patronized source for CBD products.    

3. They can do something better in an industry

When it comes to building a house, it usually takes a good number of people to collaborate. The Perkins Brothers , though, prefer to do most of the work. As contractors, they don’t subcontract the work. Instead, they follow a very hands-on approach in construction to ensure quality and build.

They’ve turned down several projects to stay within their area and keep a close eye on things. The way they do business has stirred and intrigued people, and they now have nearly 300,000 subscribers on their Youtube channel.

4. They’re industry experts wanting to branch out

Mixtape the Game started as a product design challenge. Its CEO, Joel Johnson, took inspiration from Cards Against Humanity and decided to create his deck of cards that was music-based. After licensing the card and creating an app version, it’s become one of the most popular card games. They sold over 100,000 decks.

Similarly, Stackify founder Matt Watson created Stackify’s software to address the tech problems he encountered as a Chief Technology Officer. The development tool turned out to be more helpful than he thought, and he ended up making it a successful business. Now, Netreo is acquiring Stackify.  

5. They need money

Business Bros Hernan Sias wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had to grind early. “The only thing I knew about money growing up is that we didn’t have any,” he bluntly shares.

This drove him to come up with a side hustle to get by. He and his brother started their first informal business called PC Cruisers out of necessity. They needed money to pay their mortgage. They successfully acquired customers doing PC repair services.

Unfortunately, as young, misguided entrepreneurs, they eventually encountered problems and were forced to shut it down.   

“That was the first time I ended up going broke. But I knew what I wanted to do going forward – entrepreneurship,” said Sias. Now, Sias is empowering people to build wealth and helping out aspiring entrepreneurs through their Business Bros podcast. 

Learn more about Business

Starting a business is hard. Making it successful is even harder. You’ll have to jump through a lot of hoops before you can truly make it as an entrepreneur. That’s why you have to be teachable, constantly striving to learn from others. 

Want to hear more entrepreneur stories? Get tips and advice from seasoned business owners!

Startup Hustle TV features top startup owners as they share secrets to their trade. The show is hosted and created by Matt DeCoursey, Full Scale ’s founder. Check it out!

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4 Entrepreneur Success Stories to Learn From

• 20 Jan 2022

Entrepreneurship is a risky but potentially rewarding endeavor. According to the online course Entrepreneurship Essentials , 50 percent of startups last five years, and just 25 percent survive 15.

“For every Amazon.com or Uber, there are scores of companies few can remember,” says Harvard Business School Professor William Sahlman in Entrepreneurship Essentials.

So, what separates successful ventures from those that fail?

“When a company succeeds, it’s because it has discovered and made the right moves along the way,” Sahlman says. “It has found out how to create and capture customer value.”

If you’re exploring entrepreneurship or in the early stages of launching a venture, it’s important to learn from others to avoid common pitfalls and discover which decisions impacted a company’s survival. Here are four stories of successful entrepreneurs to inspire your entrepreneurial journey.

Access your free e-book today.

4 Successful Entrepreneur Stories

1. adi dassler of adidas.

Some of today’s biggest brands started with humble beginnings, and no one embodies this better than Adidas founder Adolf “Adi” Dassler.

Dassler’s shoemaking career began in his mother’s washroom in a small town in Bavaria, Germany. It was there that Dassler began designing and cobbling shoes and decided he wanted to make the best possible sports shoe for athletes.

While there were plenty of shoemakers at the time, Dassler was committed to standing out in the market by gathering feedback from athletes about what they looked for in a shoe, what pain points could be improved on, and how they felt about his early models.

This feedback allowed Dassler to craft an athletic shoe that was highly valued by his customers and gave him legitimacy when he registered “Adi Dassler Adidas Sportschuhfabrik” in 1949 at 49 years old. It was that same year the first shoe with the soon-to-become-signature Adidas three stripes was registered.

Dassler’s vision to create the best shoe for athletes proved itself in 1954 when the German national football team won the World Cup final against the Hungarians—while wearing the new model of Adidas cleats.

“Their unbelievable victory would be heard around the world for decades to come,” Adidas states on its website , “and it made Adidas and its founder a household name on football pitches everywhere.”

Since then, Adidas has grown into an international brand known for high-quality athleticwear. Dassler’s story sheds light on the importance of listening to target customers about their dreams, needs, and pain points.

“Adi Dassler’s secret to success had an additional personal ingredient: He met with athletes, listened carefully to what they said, and constantly observed what can be improved or even invented to support their needs,” reads Adidas’s website . “The best of the best trusted Adidas and its founder from the beginning.”

Related: 5 Steps to Validate Your Business Idea

2. Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble

After leaving dating app company Tinder and an abusive relationship in 2014, Whitney Wolfe Herd was inspired to create an empowering dating experience for women.

“For all the advances women had been making in workplaces and corridors of power, the gender dynamics of dating and romance still seemed so outdated,” Wolfe Herd writes on Bumble’s website . “I thought, ‘What if I could flip that on its head? What if women made the first move and sent the first message?’”

Wolfe Herd, along with dating app Badoo co-founder Andrey Andreev and former Tinder employees Chris Gulzcynski and Sarah Mick, designed a dating app that requires women to make the first move in heterosexual matches.

The brand took off—largely on college campuses—and the app reached 100,000 downloads in its first month.

As its user base grows, Wolfe Herd remains a strong advocate for gender equality and sexual harassment prevention, building in-app features that block hate speech and blur inappropriate images. Wolfe Herd and her team also lobbied the state of Texas—where the company is headquartered—to pass a law prohibiting the sending of unsolicited lewd photos, which passed in 2019 .

“I’m more dedicated than ever to helping advance gender equality—and putting an end to the misogyny that still plagues society,” Wolfe Herd writes in a letter to Bumble users . She later adds, “I want nothing more than for your connections to be both meaningful and healthy.”

Wolfe Herd’s story serves as a reminder to use your own life for business inspiration and use a cause you care about to differentiate your product and brand in a saturated market.

Related: How to Identify an Underserved Need in the Market

3. Melanie Perkins of Canva

In 2007, Melanie Perkins was working a part-time job while studying in Perth, Australia, teaching students how to use desktop design software. The software was expensive, complex, and required a semester’s worth of instruction to learn how to use, prompting Perkins to ask, “Is there a way this could be simpler and less expensive?”

Perkins’s goal to create an affordable, simple, online design tool was originally turned down by over 100 investors—it wasn’t until three years into her pitching process that Canva received its first investment.

Perkins credits this investment to a shift in her pitching strategy: She began leading with the relatable problem Canva aims to solve.

“A lot of people can relate to going into something like Photoshop and being completely overwhelmed," Perkins said in an interview for Inc . "It's important to tell the story, because if your audience doesn't understand the problem, they won't understand the solution."

Today, 60 million customers use Canva to create designs across 190 countries.

Perkins’s story reflects the importance of effectively communicating the value of a business idea , as well as the tenacity and resilience required for entrepreneurial success.

Related: How to Effectively Pitch a Business Idea

4. Neil Blumenthal, Dave Gilboa, Andy Hunt, and Jeff Raider of Warby Parker

One example mentioned in Entrepreneurship Essentials is that of innovative online eyewear company Warby Parker. In 2008, Wharton MBA student Blumenthal lost his prescription eyeglasses. He was reluctant to purchase a new pair because they were so expensive. He also didn’t want to visit an eyeglass store.

The idea came to him in the middle of the night, and he emailed three friends—Gilboa, Hunt, and Raider—immediately: Why not start an online company to sell prescription glasses at an affordable price?

They set to work, and Warby Parker was poised to launch just after the four founders graduated with their MBA degrees in the spring of 2010—that is, until GQ reached out to Blumenthal about writing an article to be published on February 15 of that year. The founders sped up their process and launched Warby Parker’s website the same day the article was printed .

The article called Warby Parker “the Netflix of eyewear,” driving interested customers to the new site in droves. The founders’ one mistake was forgetting to add a “sold out” functionality to the website. The waitlist for Warby Parker eyewear grew to 20,000 people, and the company hit its first-year sales target in three weeks.

"It was this moment of panic but also a great opportunity for us to provide awesome customer service and write personalized emails to apologize and explain," Blumenthal says in an interview for Inc . "That really set the tone for how we would run customer service."

A few things set Warby Parker apart from the eyewear market at the time:

• Its online model : A new way of delivering the product helped it break into a stagnant industry
• Its affordable prices : A pair of Warby Parker frames with prescription lenses cost $95—much less expensive than other brands at the time
• Its home try-on program : This enabled customers to try on five pairs of glasses and send back the pairs they didn’t want to purchase.
• Its commitment to giving back : For every pair of glasses purchased, Warby Parker donated a pair to someone in need

Warby Parker donated its millionth pair of glasses in 2019 and continues to be an example of innovation in an existing market.

Why Learn from Case Studies?

Reading about the trials, tribulations, decisions, and successes of other entrepreneurs is an effective way to gain insight into what your experience could be like. What common threads do you notice in the aforementioned examples? What characteristics do these successful entrepreneurs share ? Use their experiences as blueprints to inform your strategic approach and in-the-moment decision-making.

When building your entrepreneurial skills, seek out courses that incorporate case studies into their teaching method , such as Entrepreneurship Essentials. Not only can you imagine yourself in their situations, but you can take their wisdom with you on your entrepreneurial journey.

Are you interested in honing your entrepreneurial skills and innovation toolkit? Explore our four-week Entrepreneurship Essentials course and other online entrepreneurship and innovation courses to learn to speak the language of the startup world.

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9 Business Growth Stages for Entrepreneurs (and how to progress through them)

• April 10, 2023

Growing a business is hard. There’s no denying it.

This is why most people struggle when starting out and consider giving up along the way.

The problem is that we tend to avoid talking about the struggles and pitfalls and instead, we like to focus on the positives and like to imagine that it will be smooth sailing. The reality is that it’s normal for businesses to struggle.

Please understand that every business has to go through different stages in order to run a more successful and profitable business and the more we understand the entrepreneur journey, the easier you can move through the stages quickly and achieve the business that’s right for you.

Hint – It’s probably a Lifestyle Boutique or a Performance business

Through extensive research and experience, I’ve discovered a common sequence of stages that entrepreneurs go through when growing their business. Each of the 9 stages presents its own unique set of opportunities and challenges.

In this article, I’ll walk you through the key stages in the entrepreneur journey to help you maximise your business growth.

Stage 1: The Start-Up

Example: A person who wants to start an eco-friendly clothing line

Every business begins as a start-up.

A start-up business often stems from an innovative concept, driven by passion or an appetite for change. It’s exciting and the possibilities are endless but success is uncertain.

You’ll face challenges such as:

• Scarce resources: Limited financial, human, and technological assets hamper business growth.
• Uncertain market validation: Doubts surrounding product-market fit and customer demand.
• Struggle to raise capital: Difficulty in attracting investors and securing funding.
• It’s difficult to secure customers: Challenges in customer acquisition and retention.
• Winning and retaining customers in a competitive landscape.

How to grow your start-up business

Despite the risks, most start-ups have to go through this but hold the potential for swift business growth and considerable impact. By tackling these obstacles with determination and strategic execution, start-ups can reshape industries and redefine the future. In essence, a start-up signifies the initial phase of an exciting journey, steered by innovation and an unwavering commitment to turning a daring vision into reality.

Stage 2. The Wilderness

Example: A solo graphic designer struggling to find clients and manage their workload

The wilderness stage is a critical phase in the entrepreneurial journey, where founders often find themselves isolated and overburdened. Operating single-handedly, entrepreneurs grapple with various aspects of their businesses, such as sales, service delivery, and daily operations. This solo endeavour can lead to stress, boredom, and a seemingly unbreakable cycle of challenges.

In fact, a staggering 75% of businesses in the UK, USA, and Australia never reach the point where they can employ additional staff. There are some obstacles you will face while in the wilderness stage, such as:

• Client acquisition: Finding consistent, high-quality clients can be a daunting and time-consuming process.
• Time management: Balancing business development, client work, and personal life often proves difficult.
• Financial strain: Limited cash flow and unpredictable income create financial stress.
• Skill development: Keeping up with industry trends and acquiring new skills can be challenging.
• Loneliness: The absence of a support network or team can lead to feelings of isolation and self-doubt.

How to escape the wilderness business stage

To successfully navigate the wilderness stage, entrepreneurs must develop resilience, adaptability, and a growth mindset. By embracing these qualities and seeking out resources, support, and opportunities for collaboration, you can overcome the challenges of the wilderness stage and lay the foundation for future growth and success.

Stage 3: The Struggling Boutique

Example: A local bakery in a quaint village, boasting a small team but struggling to make ends meet

At the struggling boutique stage, businesses form a small team that brings more focus to individual roles, yet profitability still appears unattainable. Often defined by their geographical location, these businesses typically exchange time for money and fail to develop substantial assets or establish a strong market presence.

Potential challenges could include:

• Limited profitability: Struggling boutiques often face cash flow issues, making it difficult to invest in growth or reward employees adequately.
• Geographic constraints: These businesses may find it challenging to expand beyond their local area, limiting their potential customer base.
• Lack of significant assets: With a primary focus on trading time for money, struggling boutiques may not develop valuable assets, such as intellectual property or a robust online presence.
• Scaling issues: Small teams may struggle to handle increased demand, hindering business growth and causing potential missed opportunities.
• Brand differentiation: In competitive markets, struggling boutiques may find it difficult to stand out and create a unique brand identity.

How to grow your struggling boutique business

The struggling boutique stage presents numerous challenges that can hinder growth and long-term success. By recognising and addressing these obstacles, you can work towards building a more sustainable model, moving beyond their geographical limitations, and transforming their venture into a thriving, profitable enterprise. The key lies in strategic planning, innovation, and a relentless commitment to overcoming these challenges while staying true to the entrepreneurial spirit that fuels the journey.

Stage 4: The Lifestyle Boutique

Example: A flourishing content marketing agency with a vibrant team and a robust online presence

At the Lifestyle Boutique stage, businesses boast a small yet dynamic team with minimal overheads and a spirited culture. Often centred around a ‘Key Person of Influence’ within the industry, the company exudes an image of being larger than it truly is. You reap the benefits of a superior income, enhanced freedom, and a more significant impact than a traditional corporate role could provide.

Challenges could include:

• Trying to maintain a healthy work-life balance for the team, while sustaining the business’s growth trajectory
• Attracting and retaining top talent, especially when competing with larger corporations or well-funded start-ups
• Continuously innovating and evolving to stay ahead of industry trends and maintain a competitive edge
• Scaling the business without compromising its core values, culture, or service quality
• Diversifying revenue streams and ensuring long-term financial stability, while keeping overheads low

A lifestyle business might be perfect for you

The Lifestyle Boutique stage represents a critical turning point in the entrepreneurial journey, where the business owner enjoys the fruits of their labour while juggling the challenges of growth and sustainability. By embracing innovation, nurturing talent, and staying true to the company’s values, the Lifestyle Boutique can continue to thrive, creating a lasting impact in the industry and paving the way for future success.

Stage 5: The Desert

Example: A mid-sized marketing agency grappling with scaling and sustaining profitability

In the desert stage, businesses find themselves in a challenging transition phase, stuck between the identity of a small boutique and a large enterprise. As overheads rise and the need for a more robust workforce becomes apparent, the company struggles to afford crucial leaders, managers, and technicians. The race against time to grow or downsize looms large, and maintaining a harmonious company culture becomes increasingly difficult.

Problems you might face at this stage:

• Balancing increased overheads with revenue generation
• Attracting and retaining talent to fill leadership, management, and technical roles
• Sustaining company culture during significant transitions
• Managing cash flow to avoid running out of capital
• Adapting and implementing effective strategies for growth or downsizing

How to avoid the “desert” stage

Navigating the desert stage requires resilience, adaptability, and strategic decision-making. Businesses that successfully tackle these challenges can evolve into a more mature, sustainable business, better equipped to handle the complexities of growth and profitability. By embracing change, refining strategies, and maintaining a commitment to their vision, businesses can emerge from the desert stage stronger and better positioned for long-term success.

Stage 6: The Factory

Example: A call centre with high staff turnover and stagnant growth

Entering the factory stage means you see a significant increase in headcount, which, creates a challenging and stressful environment. Businesses in this stage often struggle with staff retention, stagnation, and constant cost-cutting measures, making it difficult to achieve sustainable growth.

• Retaining top talent: High-performers often leave due to insufficient rewards or lack of career progression, resulting in a loss of valuable skills and expertise.
• Limited funds for R&D: With strained finances, businesses struggle to invest in research and development, hindering innovation and growth.
• Inefficient resource allocation: A focus on cost-cutting measures may lead to poor resource allocation.
• Eroding company culture: Rapid expansion and high staff turnover can damage company culture, leading to reduced morale and productivity.
• Scaling challenges: The pressure to grow quickly can lead to shortcuts, compromising the quality of products or services, and ultimately damaging the company’s reputation.

Overcome the Factory business model

To overcome the challenges of the factory stage, you must focus on optimising revenue per person and implementing strategic growth plans. By fostering a healthy company culture, investing in innovation, and ensuring efficient resource allocation, you can break free from the factory stage, paving the way for a more sustainable and successful future.

Stage 7: Performance Business

Example: A thriving software development company with a proficient team and top-notch assets

At the performance stage, businesses experience a significant transformation, boasting a dynamic team of professionals collaborating with well-developed assets. The company now caters to a broader market and multiple territories, generating reliable, consistent profits. Owners have the luxury of savouring the profits or making an exit for a life-changing sum.

Running a performance business might come with some key challenges:

• Maintaining a strong company culture amidst growth and expansion
• Continuously innovating to stay competitive in the market
• Scaling operations efficiently without compromising quality
• Attracting and retaining top talent in the industry
• Balancing short-term profitability with long-term strategic investments
• Navigating potential legal, regulatory, and tax complexities in new markets
• Ensuring seamless communication and collaboration across teams and departments

High-performing businesses achieve outstanding growth

The performance stage, although rewarding, comes with its own set of challenges that entrepreneurs must skillfully navigate. By fostering a strong company culture, embracing innovation, and efficiently scaling operations, you can build a truly outstanding business. Whether the goal is to enjoy the fruits of hard work or make a life-changing exit, overcoming the hurdles of the performance stage is a testament to an entrepreneur’s commitment.

Stage 8: The Unicorn

Example: Tech giants like Facebook, Uber, Tesla, and LinkedIn

Unicorn businesses are exceptional entities in the entrepreneurial landscape. These high-performing teams capitalise on the perfect blend of timing, opportunity, and substantial funding. As a result, they gain considerable attention, achieving skyrocketing valuations in a relatively short period. While challenging to emulate, unicorns stand as a testament to the power of ambition and entrepreneurial spirit.

Unicorn businesses face some unique challenges, such as:

• Securing substantial funding: Attracting the necessary investment to scale rapidly and seize opportunities is a significant challenge for unicorn businesses.-
• Maintaining rapid growth: Sustaining exceptional growth rates and market dominance while facing increasing competition requires constant innovation and strategic planning.
• Scaling organisational culture: As the business expands rapidly, preserving the original company culture and values becomes increasingly difficult.
• Attracting and retaining top talent: Unicorn businesses must constantly recruit and retain the best talent to stay ahead of the competition and continue driving growth.
• Managing public perception: As unicorns receive heightened attention, they face increased scrutiny and must manage their public image carefully.

What makes “unicorn” businesses so successful?

Unicorn businesses represent the pinnacle of entrepreneurial success, demonstrating what is possible when the right ingredients of timing, opportunity, and investment align. Navigating the challenges unique to this stage is crucial to maintaining their extraordinary status and continuing to push the boundaries of innovation and growth. The legacy of these exceptional companies serves as an inspiration for entrepreneurs worldwide, reminding us of the limitless possibilities that can arise from a bold vision and unwavering determination.

Stage 9: The Corporation

Example: A multinational consumer goods company

Large, established corporations, like multinational consumer goods companies, boast numerous assets and a vast workforce striving to enhance them. Despite their size and market dominance, these bureaucratic entities must adopt an entrepreneurial mindset to fend off disruption from rapidly growing competitors and unforeseen unicorns. Nowadays, the financial resources surrounding corporations are up for grabs by ambitious entrepreneurial teams eager to claim their share.

Corporations face constant challenges, such as:

• Maintaining agility and innovation in a bureaucratic structure
• Attracting and retaining top talent in a competitive market
• Adapting to shifting market demands and consumer preferences
• Integrating technological advancements and digital transformation
• Balancing short-term profitability with long-term growth and sustainability
• Navigating an increasingly complex regulatory environment
• Managing and mitigating reputational risks in a hyper-connected world

Corporate businesses need a growth mindset

In the era of the corporation, embracing an entrepreneurial spirit and proactively tackling challenges is paramount for success. By fostering a culture of innovation, adaptability, and ambition, corporations can secure their place in the market, ward off disruption, and continue to grow. As a multinational consumer goods company or any other large corporation, recognising and seizing opportunities for transformation will help you thrive in an ever-evolving business landscape.

Revenue Per Person: A Key Indicator of Success

Throughout the entrepreneurial journey, one crucial metric to monitor is revenue per person. This vital number helps gauge the efficiency and profitability of your business. By focusing on increasing revenue per person, you can ensure that your business remains agile, competitive, and financially healthy.

For example, a struggling boutique with low revenue per person might consider investing in technology, refining their product or service offering, and optimising their sales and marketing efforts to increase revenue. Similarly, businesses in the factory stage must find ways to improve revenue per person to avoid high staff turnover and stagnation.

How to grow your business the right way…

Understanding the stages of the entrepreneurial journey is crucial for navigating the inevitable challenges and maximizing your business’s potential. By recognising the pitfalls and opportunities at each stage and focusing on optimizing revenue per person, you can create a more efficient, profitable, and successful business.

Want more business growth strategies?

Whether you’re at the start-up stage or transitioning into a performance team, the entrepreneurial journey is a thrilling, rewarding, and sometimes daunting experience. Keep learning, adapting, and pushing forward, and you’ll be well on your way to realising your vision and creating a lasting impact in your industry.

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23 Pro Tips for Running a Successful Business

Published: December 12, 2022

Just about anyone can start a business.

Once you fill out a few forms, get the permits or licenses you need, offer a great product or service, and advertise it, it’s safe to say you’re a business owner.

Running a successful business is an entirely different story. Several factors affect the success of a business. In this article, we’ll share the latest data that you need to know before opening a small business. We'll talk about the factors that impact business success, and a few pro tips on how to run and maintain a thriving business.

Here’s a table of contents to help you navigate the important information you need to know:

What makes a business successful?

What factors can impact business success, business success trends [new data], how to run a business, what does business success look like.

One of the challenges of running a thriving business is that there are many ways to measure success. Each business owner must create their own unique definition, and stick to it.

For many, success means profit. While short-term gains are exciting, long-term wealth and growth are common goals. This may also extend to personal wealth and collecting expensive items like homes or cars. Others assess their value through their ability to solve problems for their customers. And some business owners focus their success on progress toward a dream or mission.

Revenue, gross profit, and cash flow management impact the present and future of every company. But to create sustained value, businesses need to make their own definitions of success.

• Focus on the customer experience.
• A powerful business idea.
• Offering value to your target audience.
• Being flexible and quick to adapt.
• Bold decision-making and creative problem-solving.
• Paying attention.
• Getting out of the office.

The world is changing quickly, and so the strategies and habits that worked in the past don't guarantee success today. You may be starting a business for the first time or working to pivot your company in a new direction. Either way, running a business today means staying open and taking in an ever-expanding flood of information.

The following steps will help you pay attention to the factors that matter most to business success.

1. Focus on the customer experience.

Customers and prospects have more access to information than ever before. According to HubSpot Research , 79% of customer service teams feel customers are more informed than they were in the past. And almost 90% of surveyed leaders say their expectations are higher than ever before.

In many situations, the way you treat your customers has more of an impact than your pricing or products.

Customer experience is the impression you give your customer. It tells them what your values are and how much you care about them. And this impacts their perception of your brand across each stage and touchpoint of the customer journey.

This means that businesses need to focus on every step of the buyer journey. You need to identify the problems on that path and offer new opportunities to create a great customer experience.

These are just a few ways you can build a customer focus:

• Make customer experience a priority by gathering insights from everyone on your team
• Take steps to reduce friction and focus energy on what's most important to your customers
• Look at your product experience from their point of view
• Solve problems before they impact your audience
• Invest in training and supporting your customer service team

Customers want and expect a great experience from beginning to end, and they’re willing to pay a premium for it. Are you ready to provide that experience? Are you over-delivering on your CX? To run a successful business, you should be.

Featured resources:

• Customer experience strategy
• How to improve your customer experience
• Customer experience trends

2. A powerful business idea.

The oldest companies in the world have been around for as long as 1,400 years . But many companies struggle to last. In 2021 alone, over 14,000 businesses in the United States filed for bankruptcy .

Every business is born from an idea. Some ideas are riskier than others. Some ideas seem like a good plan at the time, but fizzle out over time. There are a few approaches you can take to find an idea that can make your business a success.

First, start with what you know. If you've ever had a hobby or job you're passionate about, you know that every niche is more complex than it seems. As you learn more, you get a clearer picture of the joys and challenges below the surface.

For example, video games are more popular than ever. But a gamer playing Stardew Valley isn't the same audience as someone who's into Half-Life. Their different approaches to gaming mean that you'll need to get more specific. This will help you find the problems you want to solve with your video game business idea.

Next, you'll want to talk to your community. Whether it's family and friends or an online group, it's smart to test out the value of your ideas with a group of people. This step can help you refine your idea and figure out what the common objections might be.

Finally, research is essential before you launch your business idea. If you want to create a product or service that people are willing to pay for, it has to be unique, useful, and high-quality. That kind of idea may take some time to polish before it's ready for purchase.

• Small business ideas
• Business opportunities

3. Offering value to your target audience.

Customer value could come from your excellent business idea. But an idea isn't enough to build a business. Honestly, it's easy to come up with a great idea. What's difficult is executing an idea so that it does what it's meant to do, and does it well.

And no great product is ever finished. Many products will need constant updates from customer reviews and internal feedback to continue to offer value.

Even if your product or service is perfect, providing value doesn't end there. The foundation of any successful business is trust. To develop that trust, you want to make sure your business goes above and beyond target audience expectations . But what does that mean?

First, it's making sure that your product does exactly what you say it does. Don't over-promise or sell functionality your product doesn't have. Next, it's about value throughout the customer experience, from support to instructions to your return policy. Value isn't just the cost of making your product or what you ask in exchange for it. It's customer perception, and how you meet those expectations.

For example, PopFlex doesn’t just offer inclusive athleisure wear, it runs a female fitness channel called Blogilates with journals, resources, and accessories to support its customers.

Image Source

• Providing value through the buyer journey
• Writing a value proposition
• Value-based selling

4. Being flexible and quick to adapt.

Change is the only constant, and for your business to prosper, you'll need to shift with the times. Whether you have to follow fashion trends or shift with regular tech updates, the ability to flex is essential.

And flexibility isn't just useful when you're adjusting your products or marketing. Employee expectations and needs will change. Customer communications will swing. It might feel more comfortable for you to stick with what you're used to and ask other people to change instead. But that approach could limit your ability to succeed.

Adapting to change isn't always easy. But greeting change with a positive and open attitude can improve productivity, loyalty, and engagement. It can also help your business act on new ideas early and give you a competitive advantage by doing so.

Flexibility and adaptability are soft skills, and if they don't come naturally to you, you may need to go out of your way to practice them.

One way to stretch your flexibility is to travel somewhere new. The experience of adjusting to a different language and culture can make it easier to flex at home. Other ways to build your comfort with change include:

• Making constant learning a priority
• Keeping up with news and trends in your industry
• Expanding your network
• Becoming an adaptable leader
• How to make your business more flexible

5. Bold decision-making and creative problem-solving.

Starting any business is a risk. But it's rarely the only bold action you'll take. More often than not, running a successful business means big decisions and creative experiments.

Dynamic thinking sounds wild and dicey when you're talking about a company that supports you, your family, and your team. But it's that creativity that creates a stable foundation for your business.

Because being creative is about finding where typical thinking has failed. It's a chance to develop new ways of solving problems. Bold decisions don't require any less planning or preparation than traditional ideas. They just take more faith, because there is usually little to no proof that these ideas will work. They might take more trial and error. But when a creative solution works, it really works.

If you don't think of yourself as bold or creative, this aspect of business success may feel a bit daunting. But there are a few ways that anyone can use the creative process to improve their business decisions.

Begin with research, and try to quickly take in as much information as you can before you take action . Then, sit with the information for a little while. Consider the possible positive and negative impacts and don't let the urgency of a deadline or external pressure rush a decision.

Creative decision-making is rarely a linear process. These tools can help when you're feeling stuck:

• Critical thinking course
• Decision trees
• Decision making

6. Paying attention.

Running a business takes a lot of skill, effort, and time. When your batteries are running low, it's tough to give your focus to the people and processes that need "extra" attention. But paying attention is what will help your business survive and thrive. It can give you vital insights you can use to grow your business over time.

For example, you want to pay attention to your customers' changing needs. People are talking about you and your brand whether you ask them to or not. Are you listening and considering what they're saying?

Your team might use traditional methods like calling or emailing your customers. You may also use the process of social listening or conduct feedback surveys , such as net promoter score (NPS), to gather data on customer sentiment. Make a habit of listening to the market and your customers .

Here’s a powerful example of a CEO who listened to feedback and applied it to grow his business. "As the founder of an indie startup, I've come to embrace a few core values," says Eugene Woo , CEO of Venngage.

"This includes realizing our mission over a long period of time instead of a quick exit, creating value for our customers by helping them solve real problems, being responsible for our own financial sustainability, scaling at our own pace, and doing the right thing over 'it's just business.' This philosophy has guided every aspect of my decision-making process as I've made Venngage into an independent, growing, and profitable business over the past four years."

7. Getting out of the office.

"Entrepreneurs are the only people who will work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week." - Lori Greiner

Running a business can take over your life. But if you don't take a break, you make it tough for your business to prosper. Stepping away from your office, store, or computer is essential to your continuing success.

Make time for social activities. Attend events, do some networking, or start a hobby that gets you out into the world. This can improve your energy levels and also help you expand your support system.

It's also a good idea to take extra care of yourself. Try to get in some physical activity, travel, and take short breaks throughout the day to give yourself a rest or change of perspective. There's a reason why airlines instruct us to place our oxygen masks on before helping others: if we don't take care of ourselves, we can't take care of someone else.

Likewise, if you don't have personal goals and plans for your overall health and well-being, you won't be as effective in running your business.

• Market demand for products and services.
• Building the right team.
• Preparation for leadership.
• Network development.
• Competitive analysis.
• Choosing the right pricing.
• Long-term goals and vision.

There are many reasons why a business might fail. According to research, there are a few challenges that are more common than others.

The following factors are essentials to consider as you start and run your business.

1. Market demand for products and services.

A great service or product will get you nowhere if there's zero need for it. Due diligence and careful, detailed market research are essential in the early stages of starting a business.

You need concrete data on your ideal customers, the existing competition, expected growth and demand, market trends, and more. Determine who would buy your product, how often, and why.

These types of insights are invaluable and help you make informed business decisions and goals. They help you not only find your niche but adequately plan inventory and forecast sales, too.

2. Building the right team.

The most successful business owners and entrepreneurs know to surround themselves with people smarter than they are. If you decide to scale your business, you’ll need a strong team to help you do great work. The only way to do this is by recruiting and hiring the best people .

And don't just build any team — build a super team. As your budget and demand allow, surround yourself with experts in things that you are not. Ask for input and feedback from them.

Involve them in decisions that will impact them directly and indirectly. This will help foster greater investment in what you're building. It will also lead you to make better, more informed decisions together. When you win, you all win.

But that's not all. "It's important to develop a clear onboarding strategy for employees and a system for measuring results," says Nico Prins .

"Putting systems in place will help as you scale the business, especially if you're expanding quickly, and reduce the amount of time and work associated in dealing with inevitable staff turnover."

3. Preparation for leadership.

Before anything else, develop the leadership qualities necessary to build your business's long-term vision. Great leaders exhibit:

• Accountability
• Organizational direction

Even as a new business owner with no other employees, you are responsible for leading your business to success. As you (hopefully) grow and others come on board, that becomes increasingly important.

If leadership skills don't come naturally to you, you're not alone. According to Gallup research, only one in ten leaders comes by those skills naturally.

This means that most people need to prepare to lead, and there are extensive resources to help develop these skills. As you begin to work on your leadership skills, these resources can help:

• Developing leadership skills
• Leadership training
• Leadership resources
• Leadership skills

4. Network development.

You'll need a strong community for your business to thrive. If you're just starting out, your network can connect you to co-marketing, funding, and other vital opportunities. If you're continuing to run a business, your network can shore up areas that need work or draw extra resources.

Networking is a buzzword that can be off-putting to some. But the quality of your network is in your relationships. If you support businesses that complement yours, they're likely to return that investment and support. It can create a steady stream of referrals and connections that can help your business grow.

To be a great partner to the people in your network, start with common values. Reach out to people in your local community and online who align with the mission and ideals you have for yourself and your business. Next, create a clear set of expectations and maintain friendly and consistent communication.

• Guide to networking
• Building business relationships

5. Competitive analysis.

Some ideas are so unique that there's little to no competition, but most businesses will be entering an already-crowded market. If your market is full of established providers, you may be fighting an uphill battle. But if you have a unique spin on your product or niche, you might be in the right place at the right time.

There's only one way you'll know for sure, and that's by completing a competitive analysis.

You'll use this strategy to learn about the products, marketing, and sales approaches of your top competition. Your learning may lead you to go in another direction. It might also help you find a need or problem that only your business can solve.

This process can also help you set benchmarks and understand the share of voice you'll need to reach your business goals.

The more organized you are, the more useful your research will be. It's also a good idea to perform this analysis on a consistent basis, each quarter is ideal, so that you can quickly respond to changes in your industry.

• Competitive analysis kit
• Competitive analysis templates

6. Choosing the right pricing.

Getting your pricing strategy right is important for your business's sustainability. If your prices are too high, you'll struggle to sell; too low, you won't be able to cover your costs.

Setting your pricing is one of the first things to do when starting a new business. Pricing your products to sell is a skill that may take some time to learn.

If your prices are too high and you limit your customer base. If they're too low and you're not pulling in enough revenue to stay afloat. Are your products priced appropriately? How many units will you need to sell each period to reach your revenue and profitability goals? Document and lay this information out clearly so you know exactly what you need to do to keep your business running and thriving.

Featured tool: Pricing strategy calculator

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7. Long-term goals and vision.

People start businesses for many different reasons. Some want to make ends meet with a side gig, others want to replace their full-time job and be their own boss. Whatever your reason is, decide upfront how you want your business to scale. If you aren't thoughtful about your long-term plans, you won't be prepared for what could happen.

For example, marketing can be unpredictable. Businesses go viral for doing great work and aren’t prepared for the influx. Knowing in advance whether you’ll meet the moment or let it pass can save you from FOMO, or even having to close your business because you lacked the preparation needed to scale.

Featured tool: Growth grader

So, create a plan before you start selling and create a vision-based plan . Whether you're in it for the moment or the long haul, this process will give you a center to go back to when you and your team have decisions to make.

Your mission statement could be about annual revenue or inspiring a community to take significant action. Either way, you'll have a document to help you focus your energies when you need to decide what to do next.

Featured tool: Mission statement templates and examples

TL; DR — If you’re planning to start a business, you must actively work to make it successful. You’ll need to research, study, and learn about your industry, customer, and market inside and out.

When it comes to business data, most entrepreneurs want to know what chances they have for success.

How many people are starting new businesses?

According to Statista and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 347,000 new businesses started in Q1 of 2022. That's an 8.4% decrease from the last quarter of 2021, but an almost 21% increase from Q1 2021. In other words, new business is booming.

Guidant research says that over 60% of entrepreneurs went into business because they wanted to be their own boss.

What are the top costs that come with starting a business?

Payroll is a top cost for many businesses. Depending on the nature of your business, wages alone can cover 15-50% of your overhead budget.

U.S. census data shows that compensation costs are up, with a 5.1% increase in wages and salaries and a 4.9% increase in benefits. At the same time, 51% of small businesses plan to expand their team in 2022.

Will my new business succeed?

The success rate of the average new business tends to decline over time. The exact numbers vary, but most align with 2021 Statista data that shows almost 80% of new businesses in operation after the first year. Ten years later, almost 35% of those businesses are still running.

The specific numbers also change depending on the industry . Some industries, like healthcare and social assistance, have a higher-than-average survival rate. Others, like construction and transportation, have rates that are lower.

But the most important business statistics are personal. 92% of surveyed business owners don't regret starting their own business. And 30% are serial entrepreneurs, starting two or more businesses.

• Define clear KPIs.
• Make great marketing and branding.
• Draft a business plan.
• Keep innovating.
• Develop a strong company culture.
• Focus on financial goals.
• Refine business processes.
• Use the right tools for your growth strategy.
• Develop a support system.

Learning how to run a business isn’t the same as starting one. But as you build your buyer personas, market research, and vision, you’ll also start to develop the skills it takes to keep a business going. Running a business looks a little different for everyone, but these steps can help you prepare your company for sustainable growth.

1. Make great marketing and branding.

If you build it, they may not come. The presence of a marketing strategy is one of the telltale signs of whether or not a business will make it.

Marketing spans everything from finding prospects to upselling new products and services to loyal customers. Marketing is about getting the right message to the right people at the right time.

Featured tool: Marketing plan template

As you build your marketing plan, ask yourself:

• Who are your customers?
• What problems do they have that you can solve?
• How do they want to engage with businesses?
• Where do they spend their time?

Answering these questions will help you understand your target audience and buyer persona. An effective marketing and branding strategy will focus on this specific audience and then grow from that core group.

Once you know who you're talking to, you need to choose the best channels for communication.

Successful businesses looking to share their message usually start by building a following on one platform at a time. Here are the most common methods for communicating with potential customers:

• Email marketing
• Social media
• Search Marketing
• Business website
• Content marketing

Most customers are online, so omnichannel marketing is a powerful option that can help you attract prospects and keep customers happy. Omnichannel integrates the various channels used by modern consumers into one seamless experience.

Strong businesses also focus their energy on a primary platform that they own. Branding is about creating a personality for your company that your audience can trust.

Your branding, design, tone, and personality all need to align across every marketing channel and point to a website.

Content marketing is another powerful option for small businesses. Having a website is beneficial because you own the channel. That means you can promote your content anytime you want without dealing with algorithms or paid ads. High-quality, valuable content on your website can drive traffic and leads to you.

As you build your marketing strategy, be sure that you're offering value to your customer. "One way to validate that people are looking for solutions to their 'problems' is through keyword research," says Nathan Gotch of Gotch SEO . "You can find the exact keywords your prospective customers are using with tools like UberSuggest or the Google Keyword Planner. You then need to create content around the keywords you find."

But it doesn't stop there. "Content is also a valuable sales tool," says Valerie Turgeon . "While a strong sales team is essential for closing the deal, buyers are more likely to self-educate and engage with digital content before conversing with sales. A content strategy will help guide your content creation and distribution efforts to get in front of buyers first and help capture leads for your sales team."

An effective content marketing strategy is one of the best ways to stand out in today's crowded online marketplace. Founder and marketing director Isaac Justesen says, "But consistently creating high-quality content isn't easy. That's why many successful businesses outsource content creation instead."

You might also want to work with partners to amplify your messaging. As CEO of Aptitude 8 Connor Jeffers told me, "In the early days of Aptitude 8, we found a lot of success with partner marketing. I recommend early-stage companies find partners that serve the same audience they're targeting, build relationships with their marketing teams, and supply those teams with great content they can help distribute easily."

More resources:

• Branding guide
• Develop brand identity
• Small business marketing guide
• Content marketing guide

2. Draft a business plan.

It's up to you whether you want to create a formal business plan or just document your professional goals. But if you want to create a business that lasts, you need a space to record and share your plan for your business, one that you're proud to share with every stakeholder.

Business plans vary but most will include most of the items below:

• Summary of your business idea
• Company description
• Products or services
• Market research
• A plan for marketing and branding
• Legal requirements
• Financial expectations
• Starting budget

It's easier than ever before to create a business plan. And your business plan isn't a just document that you write and set aside. It's a living document you can store in the cloud. This means that every person with a stake in your business can have access to your plan. This will ensure consistency, collaboration, and the evolution of your business plan over time.

Featured tool: Free business plan template

3. Define clear KPIs.

Without concrete goals, it will be difficult to tell how well your business is actually doing. So, setting the right KPIs is essential.

KPI stands for key performance indicator. These are a way to track your business performance against your goals. They can give your team a target to push toward, help you measure progress, and improve your decision-making as your business grows.

If you're not sure where to start, get clear on the four Ps : product, price, promotion, and place. These can guide your marketing plan, and customer personas, and can be a jumping-off point for setting other KPIs.

Try not to set too many KPIs to start, and make sure each KPI is SMART :

4. Keep innovating.

Like bold decision-making, innovation is a must for business success. Regular attention to invention and experimentation can keep your business from growing stagnant.

That said, you don't have to keep reinventing the wheel. Some of the most powerful innovations are small changes that improve the customer experience.

To make a habit of innovating, weave creative planning into your business processes. Set aside time during meetings and daily tasks for brainstorming, experiments, and trend research.

And make a point of keeping up with news and forward thinkers, especially in your industry and niche. Fresh insights can spark conversations that could lead to your next big idea.

5. Refine business processes.

Many business processes come about organically. Sometimes a process sticks around because of habits or resistance to change. Other processes evolve in response to outside forces.

To keep your business growing, effective processes are key. So, be intentional with planning and strategy before creating the processes your team completes each day.

Creating a solid plan before habits start forming will ensure that each process is best for your business. It also gives you an easy way to track and adjust processes that aren't working.

Featured tool: Free sales plan template

Processes often come from the tools you use. But if you scale your efforts with the right software you can get more done with less. Instead of disparate platforms, spreadsheets, and email tools, condense your sales process into one distinct CRM and sales platform .

The right tools make you better able to meet and exceed customer expectations. For example, 71% of customers are comfortable working with bots if it means a better experience. So, a tool like live chat software can help address the need for a quick response.

6. Develop a strong company culture.

Businesses often overlook the power that culture and employee engagement can have on all fronts of the company. But culture makes an impact, from recruiting to exit interviews.

To build a solid culture, focus on your team.

"Good HR teamed with an arsenal of great tools can change your company for the better," says Ali Anderson . "Happy, engaged employees do great work, and company growth will quickly follow."

According to Anderson: "When companies invest in their training and onboarding processes, they'll find their employees are more prepared to do great work and take on the challenges of the business."

Taking steps to measure and improve employee engagement and employee net promoter scores can increase productivity, improve employee sentiment, and make your employees more likely to recommend your business to their friends. If you’re looking for tips and ideas on this, check out the Culture Happens podcast .

Monthly or quarterly performance discussions build team camaraderie and improve employee mental health. These meetings can also create an environment of trust, which leads to greater innovation.

Small businesses can attract rare candidates by having a positive culture, a strong career track, and well-trained, unbiased recruiters. "A supportive culture and a strong career track are key to attracting the best of the best," agrees Taylor Dumouchel .

"Top professionals seek respect, not just within their immediate teams, but throughout an organization; they want to work for companies that value what they do. In order to recruit top talent, executives need to highlight their positive and supportive culture and underscore how they recognize that their positions are a part of the major drivers for company growth."

Good HR teams with an arsenal of great tools can change your company for the better. Happy, engaged employees do great work, and company growth will quickly follow.

Many business leaders don't realize that company culture begins when a company is still new. They sometimes forget to care for the employees who are creating that culture. So, once you have a strong team of people, make sure that you're providing what they need to stick around.

Do what you can to help your team feel motivated, incentivized, and well taken care of so they can effectively do their job. This is why offering benefits to your staff is so important.

As you make hiring decisions, factor in how much budget you have to cover employee benefits. Once you know your budget, consider what benefits are required on a federal, state, and local level for your business. Some required benefits may include:

• Unemployment taxes and insurance
• Time off for voting, jury duty, and active military service
• Workers’ compensation
• Compliance with Family and Medical Leave Act ( FMLA )

After factoring in the costs of required benefits, you can determine what elective benefits you would like to offer. Know that these benefits are often what keep an employer competitive, especially in a hot job market. Competitive analysis can also help you see what other companies in your industry are offering their employees.

Other potential benefits include:

• Health insurance
• Retirement savings
• Paid vacation and/or holidays
• Disability insurance (required for some states)
• Life insurance

7. Focus on financial goals.

Launching and building a business is expensive. You need financing — capital, investments, loans, and revenue — to get you through the lean times.

For a business to be successful, it has to make enough money to sustain operations and turn a profit that can be re-invested for future growth. A detailed budget can help you keep track of revenue and expenses.

Featured tool: Marketing budget template

As you develop and track your financial goals, don't forget to factor in your business costs including:

Determine how much money your business needs to bring in on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis to succeed. If you're not comfortable with accounting , balance sheets , or financial forecasting , start learning now.

8. Use the right tools for your growth strategy.

The number of apps, products, and SaaS solutions available is growing exponentially. Identify and use those tools that can help you optimize your business.

Thanks to the ever-decreasing cost of technology, even small businesses have all the tools they need at their fingertips (for instance, a free-forever, all-in-one CRM ). But choosing the right tools can be challenging.

According to Manvi Agarwal , there are a few things you should consider when deciding which tool is best:

• Zero in on the processes you want to use each tool for.
• See how each one of those tools can make that process easier or more efficient.
• Choose one that performs a very specific task, even if it might be tempting to go for an all-in-one tool.
• Compare how much value the tool is providing vs. the amount it will cost you.
• Ensure the tool is scalable – that it grows along with your business and can meet your business's changing needs.

If you haven’t implemented a stack of tools to streamline your business processes, using a CRM is a great place to start. HubSpot CRM is the perfect foundation for an effective growth strategy.

9. Develop a support system.

Running a business can take over your life. While many thrive on the intensity, too much can create a level of stress that's not healthy. So, a support system is essential for the continued success of your business.

This group of people can help you manage your stress and keep a positive outlook through the highs and lows. They can be active members of your small business team or offer vital reminders to maintain a balance between work and life.

Those with a tight circle of family and friends may rely on them for more than moral support. According to 2022 Bank of America research, 46% of small business owners run their businesses with a partner or spouse. And 12% fund their businesses with resources from family and friends.

It's also a good idea to expand your social circle. Shore up your community with local social clubs, industry organizations, and charitable groups. A support system can benefit you and everyone who's important to you with positive personal impacts. It can also boost collaboration and productivity.

Starting a business is easy.

But running a successful company takes time, effort, and commitment. Take the time to study the businesses that keep people at the forefront. These are the best teachers, even if they’ve made a few missteps along the way.

Cultivate a reputation of trustworthiness and build credibility and expertise in your industry. Then, take what you’ve learned here and turn it into action. You’ll be on your way to running a successful business that will delight your customers and turn a profit.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Embarking on an entrepreneur’s journey is like setting sail towards a dream, full of aspirations of success, autonomy and personal fulfillment. A path that begins with brilliant optimism but often encounters unexpected challenges and complexities.

Every entrepreneur starts with a dream. This dream isn’t just about financial gain; it is the vision of creating something unique, a business that embodies your passion and values. It is the dream of creating a future that promises not only monetary rewards, but also a sense of personal fulfillment and lifestyle enrichment.

However, reality for many entrepreneurs deviates from this dream , soon turning it into a nightmare. 

Throughout this article, I will provide you with the knowledge and tools to navigate this complex landscape. 

4 Stages of an Entrepreneur Journey

The initial dream, with visions of success and personal gratification, may be in stark contrast to reality. Many entrepreneurs may be faced with personal difficulties, not least the lack of work-life balance .

One of the critical issues is the gap in  entrepreneurial education . Many entrepreneurs embark on their journey without the skills and knowledge needed to run a business effectively.

So let’s see what components need to be considered in order to be successful.

1. Strategy: The Heartbeat of Business

In the entrepreneurship field, strategy is not just a component of success; it’s the very heartbeat that keeps a business alive and thriving. Many entrepreneurs, particularly those transitioning from a specialized skill like development, often underestimate the importance of a comprehensive business strategy . It’s a common misstep that can lead to the derailment of even the most promising ventures.

Crafting a Comprehensive Strategy

A sound business strategy has many facets. You must not only set goals, but know how to create a roadmap for every decision and action within the company. The key elements:

• Long-term goals : start by asking questions like “ where do you see your company in 5, 10 or 20 years? What impact o do you want to have in your industry? It’s crucial to establish goals that are both challenging and attainable.
• Market Positioning : Market Positioning: Understanding your position in the market is critical. This involves analyzing competitors, understanding your target audience and identifying what sets your company apart.
• Unique Value Proposition (UVP) : Your UVP is what makes your business stand out in a crowded marketplace. It’s the unique commitment you offer to your customers, unmatched by anyone else. This could be an innovative product feature, exceptional customer service , or a unique brand story. Your UVP should resonate with your target audience and be reflected in every aspect of your business, from marketing to product development.

The Consequences of a Weak Strategy

Without a sound strategy, companies often find themselves adrift. They may chase short-term gains at the expense of long-term profitability, or they may become too scattered trying to please everyone. To avoid business failure, it is important to have a clear direction to avoid wasted resources and demoralization of teams.

Implementing and Evolving Your Strategy

Developing a strategy is just the beginning. The real challenge lies in its execution and evolution. Regularly review and adjust your strategy in response to market changes, customer feedback, and internal growth. Remember, a static strategy in a dynamic world is a recipe for obsolescence.

As you craft your business strategy, consider the power of AI to revolutionize your approach. Discover how AI can streamline your operations and give you a competitive edge

AI FOR SMALL BUSINESS PROGRAM

2. Marketing and Sales: The Engines of Growth

Marketing and sales go beyond being mere aspects of a business; they’re the driving forces behind growth and sustainability. In today’s digital age, the online world has revolutionized the way businesses connect and engage with their customers, making it an essential skill for entrepreneurs to master .

Understanding Online Customer Journeys

• Mapping the Customer Journey : The first step in effective online marketing is understanding the customer journey . This involves mapping out each stage a customer goes through, from becoming aware of your product to making a purchase and beyond. Each stage requires different marketing strategies and tools . For instance, social media might be effective for creating awareness, while email marketing could be better for nurturing leads.
• Creating Engaging Content : At each stage of the customer journey, content plays a crucial role. This could be educational blog posts, engaging social media updates, informative videos, or persuasive product descriptions. The key is to provide value that aligns with what the customer is seeking at that particular stage.

Identifying and Targeting Potential Customers

• Market Research : Understanding who your customers are is vital. This involves market research to identify demographics, interests, pain points, and buying behaviors. Tools like customer surveys, social media analytics, and market analysis reports can provide valuable insights.
• Segmentation and Personalization : Once you understand your market, segment your audience to tailor your marketing efforts. Tailoring your approach can greatly enhance the impact of your marketing campaigns. Use data to create personalized messages that resonate with different segments of your audience.

Effective Conversion Strategies

• Optimizing sales funnel: Think of it as mapping out a customer’s journey in the business world. From the first handshake (or click) to the final deal, every step should be smooth and clear. It’s crucial to make your business’s online presence – your website and landing pages – as welcoming and navigable as a well-organized office.
• Leveraging Digital Marketing Tools : In the business landscape, these tools are like your ambassadors. SEO helps your business get noticed in the crowded marketplace. PPC advertising is like a striking billboard on a busy street. Social media marketing opens up engaging conversations with potential clients, and email marketing keeps the dialogue going. Each tool plays a unique role at different stages of your client’s journey.
• Establishing Trust and Credibility : In business, your reputation is your currency. Build trust by showcasing customer testimonials and detailed case studies. These are your success stories, proving your business’s ability to deliver. Flaunt your industry certifications as badges of honor, reassuring clients that they’re in capable hands. It’s about demonstrating that your business isn’t just another player in the game, but a trusted and reliable partner in their journey.

Measuring and Analyzing Performance

• Analytics and Feedback : Regularly measure the performance of your marketing and sales efforts. Employ analytics tools to monitor your website’s traffic, track conversion rates, and gauge customer engagement. Feedback from customers can also provide insights into what’s working and what needs improvement.
• Continuous Improvement : Marketing and sales are dynamic fields. Keep abreast of new trends and technological advances. Continuously test and refine your strategies based on performance data and market changes.

3. Personal Development: The Entrepreneur’s Reflection

Personal development in entrepreneurship is not just about enhancing business skills; it’s a profound journey of self-reflection and growth that directly impacts every facet of your venture. Whether you’re a startup founder, a serial entrepreneur, or running a small business, personal development is the cornerstone of your success.

Embracing the Entrepreneurial Mindset

From Founder to Visionary : As a founder, your personal growth is intrinsically linked to the evolution of your startup. It’s about transitioning from an idea to a viable product or service, and eventually to a thriving business. This journey demands a mindset that embraces challenges, learns from failures, and continually seeks improvement.

The Serial Entrepreneur’s Learning Curve : For serial entrepreneurs, personal development involves leveraging past experiences, both successes and failures, to better navigate future ventures. It’s about understanding when to persevere, when to pivot, and even when to plan an exit strategy. Each venture offers unique lessons that shape your business journey .

Building Skills for Growth and Sustainability

Customer Acquisition and Revenue Growth : Understanding the nuances of customer acquisition is crucial. It’s not just about attracting customers; it’s about building relationships and creating value that translates into sustainable revenue. Personal development in this area involves honing negotiation skills, understanding market trends, and developing strategies for customer retention and loyalty.

Mastering Automation and Efficiency : this is key to efficiency. As an entrepreneur, developing skills to identify and invest in the right automation tools can significantly impact your business’s productivity and profitability.

Download Your Free E-Book perfect for entrepreneurs looking to refine their strategies and drive business growth. Transform your entrepreneur journey from vision to reality!

Expanding Your Network and Partnerships

The Power of Networking : Building a robust network is a vital personal development area for any entrepreneur. It’s about creating connections that can open doors to new opportunities, partnerships, and collaborations. Networking skills are essential for finding mentors, investors, and even potential customers.

Fostering Strategic Partnerships : Learning how to identify and cultivate partnerships can be a game-changer for your business. It’s about finding synergies with other businesses and entrepreneurs that can lead to mutual growth and success.

Investing in Yourself as the Sole Driver

The Role of a Mentor : Seeking mentorship is a crucial aspect of personal development. A mentor can provide guidance, share wisdom, and offer a different perspective that can help you navigate the complex landscape.

Continuous Learning and Investment : As the sole driver of your business, investing in your personal development is spend in your business’s future. This means staying updated with industry trends, attending workshops, and continuously seeking knowledge to enhance your skills and capabilities.

4. Human Resource Management: Building a Strong Team

Whether you are a start-up entrepreneur or a small business having a team that is strong, and aligned with company values and goals is critical.

Hiring and Team Composition

Identifying Key Roles : Understand the roles that are crucial for your business’s success. This involves analyzing your business needs and identifying skill gaps. Strategic hiring means looking for individuals who not only have the necessary skills but also fit your company culture.

Diversity and Inclusivity : Building a diverse team brings different perspectives and ideas, fostering innovation and creativity. Embrace inclusivity in your hiring practices to create a team that represents a range of experiences and backgrounds.

Developing and Nurturing Talent

Training and Development : Investing in your team’s development is crucial. This can include formal training, workshops, or continuous learning opportunities. Encourage your team to upskill and reskill, aligning their growth with your business’s evolving needs.

Mentorship and Coaching : Implement programs for mentorship within your company. Pairing less experienced team members with seasoned mentors can facilitate knowledge transfer and foster a supportive work environment.

Performance Management and Feedback

Setting Clear Objectives : Clearly defined goals and objectives help team members understand what is expected of them. Apply SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound – to bring clarity and direction to your objectives.

• Regular feedback and reviews : To promote continuous improvement and help employees understand their strengths implement a system of regular performance reviews and feedback.

Creating a Positive Work Environment

Work-Life Balance : Promote a healthy work-life balance. This may encompass options like flexible work schedules, the ability to work remotely, or various wellness programs. A balanced team is more productive and motivated.

Recognition and Rewards : Acknowledge and celebrate the accomplishments of your team. This can be through formal recognition programs, bonuses, or simple gestures of appreciation. Recognition boosts morale and encourages high performance.

Dealing with Challenges

Conflict Resolution : Equip yourself with skills to handle conflicts effectively. A harmonious work environment is essential for productivity and team cohesion.

Adapting to Change : Be prepared to adapt your HR strategies as your business grows. The needs of a 5-person team are different from those of a 50-person team. Stay flexible and responsive to these changing needs.

To further strengthen your HRM approach, consider exploring innovative strategies like inbound recruiting

INBOUND RECRUITING PROGRAM

Conclusion: Return to the Dream

As we reach the end of our exploration into the entrepreneurial journey, it’s clear that the path is strewn with both challenges and opportunities. If you find yourself resonating with these challenges and are in search of guidance and support, know that there is a way back to the original dream that ignited your entrepreneur spirit.

The journey of an entrepreneur is not a straight line; it’s a winding path of learning, adapting, and growing. With the right approach, mindset, and tools, this journey can be incredibly fulfilling and successful. Remember, every challenge faced is an opportunity to learn and evolve. The dream you started with can still be the future you live, provided you navigate these waters with perseverance and insight.

If you’re seeking to deepen your understanding or need personalized advice to navigate your entrepreneurial path, don’t hesitate to reach out. Whether you’re grappling with strategic planning, marketing complexities, personal development, or team management, expert guidance can make a significant difference.

Are you ready to rekindle your dream and transform challenges into stepping stones for success? Contact us for more information and tailored support. Let us help you chart a course back to the essence of your vision, where passion meets practicality, and dreams converge with reality.

Together, we can turn your aspirations into tangible achievements. Reach out now to take the first step back to your dream

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I direct Digital Coach® , the professional training school, leader in training all professionals who work in the Digital Marketing & Sales field. As a trainer, I have trained over 35,000 business professionals from over 300 large multinational companies and over 5,000 Italian SMEs. I devised the “Digital Strategy Framework®” method , thanks to which since 2014 I have been helping companies to define and improve over time a digital strategy that maximizes the generation of turnover and online sales.

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39 Inspiring Quotes About Business Growth — and Tips for Success

Here are some favorite quotes about business growth to inspire you — plus expert advice to spark new ideas.

Nick Johnson

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Businesses face pressure to grow and evolve rapidly to stay competitive. But growth can be difficult, and even the most intrepid among us sometimes need an extra dose of inspiration .

We’ve rounded up 39 quotes about business growth — and advice for success — to inspire you and spark new ideas. Have a favorite quote that we missed? Click to tweet and add yours.

Quotes about business growth and change

“Becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.” – Michelle Obama, from Becoming

“Play by the rules, but be ferocious.” – Phil Knight, founder, Nike

“Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.” – Sigmund Freud, neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis

“Motivation is the catalyzing ingredient for every successful innovation.” – Clayton Christensen, economist and Harvard professor

“Every problem is a gift — without problems we would not grow.” – Tony Robbins, motivational speaker and writer

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” – John F. Kennedy, 35th U.S. president

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. John F. Kennedy

“Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.” – Napoleon Hill, author

“Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.” – Andy Rooney, broadcast journalist

“Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom.” – William George Jordan, writer/editor

“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

“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

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T.S. Eliot, author

“The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.” – Sergey Brin, co-founder, Google

“If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs.” – Dhirubhai Ambani, founder, Reliance Industries

“I do not know the word ‘quit.’ Either I never did, or I have abolished it.” – Susan Butcher, sled dog racer

I do not know the word ‘quit.’ Either I never did, or I have abolished it. Susan Butcher

“To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart.” – Thomas Watson, Sr., former chairman and CEO, IBM

“It’s very easy to be different but very difficult to be better.” – Jonathan Ive, former chief design officer, Apple

“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

“Happy employees lead to happy customers, which leads to more profits.” – Vaughn Aust, COO, Gemini

Happy employees lead to happy customers, which leads to more profits. Vaughn Aust

“Employees want to feel inspired by their leaders…hire individuals who will lead by example.” – Jody Kohner, EVP global enablement, Salesforce

“Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.” – William Durant, co-founder, General Motors

“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

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu, Chinese Taoist philosopher

Quotes about business transformation

“[Businesses] rarely come up for air to re-evaluate how they are selling. This means that current sales practices, process, and organizational structure may in fact be hindering their growth more than any external factor they believe they are facing.” – Tiffani Bova, growth and innovation evangelist, Salesforce

“Consumers now expect to be able to get things, talk to someone, and do what they want at any time. That’s led to a divide. Some companies and products provide such a perfect, seamless experience that it has raised the bar. In fact, it’s so easy and seamless that we kind of forget to be impressed. But what they’re doing is making the ones that don’t deliver that kind of great experience all the more obvious.” — Susan Weinschenk, chief behavioral scientist and CEO, The Team W

“Customer experience professionals love to think about their customer journey maps, but these can be very rigid. How many consumers follow the same exact path to get to their outcome? Very few. I believe consumer experiences need to be far more dynamic than they are today — not just personalized, which we’ve been talking about for a few years. After all, companies can leverage data about customers in the moment — what they did in the last 24 minutes or hours, not in the last 24 days.” — Tom Puthiyamadam, transformation consulting leader, PwC [ read the full interview ]

“We’ve been talking about the importance of ‘ customer-centricity ’ for some time. But until now retailers have lacked both the technology and the mandate to connect marketing, sales, service, and commerce systems to enable a 360-degree view of the customer. Now that relevant and personalized engagement has emerged as a key differentiator, retailers will finally make the investments to deliver on the promise of putting the customer at the center of everything they do.” — Rob Garf, vice president and general manager, retail, Salesforce

“Companies that invest more in digital transformation actually outperform their peers over time. These companies are more prepared for disruption, better able to monetize new digital channels, and better able to build a bigger user base. What’s more, this phenomenon exists regardless of industry.” — Geoff Cubitt, CEO and founder, Cardinal Griffin, LLC

Companies that invest more in digital transformation actually outperform their peers over time. Geoff Cubitt

“Data itself is not enough to create personalized experiences. Artificial intelligence is required to turn a comprehensive data trove into insights that can anticipate customers’ needs and act as their digital assistant. Much like his or her pre-industrial counterpart, a B2I (business-to-individual) virtual tailor, for example, would know each individual’s measurements and tastes in fabrics, styles, and other variables, and could thus make highly personalized recommendations.” — Peter Schwartz, senior vice president, strategic planning, Salesforce [ read the full article ]

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Quotes about the artificial intelligence impact on business growth.

“Accenture forecasts that AI could double the economic growth rates of 12 major countries by 2035. These gains will come from computers doing what they have always been good at — freeing us to make better use of our time. For instance, AI makes it possible to automate routine tasks such as responding to simple customer questions. It can also be used to spot changes in customer preferences, identify visual problems in manufacturing, further automate agriculture, identify fraud, and better inform business decision-making.” — Richard Socher, CEO, You.com [ read the full article ]

“AI is about more than replacing each worker with a robot. It will involve the disruption and reshaping of whole industries. Business models will evolve to be quite transparent. In a world of AI, consumers will have high access to information, perhaps using their digital assistant to find the best price or analyze which product has received the best reviews. It will no longer be possible to use information asymmetry to charge people a disproportionate amount.” — Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, chairman and CEO, Sinovation Ventures 

“Imagine a customer walking up to a supermarket shelf and holding his or her smartphone up against different bags of potato chips. Using image processing, language processing, and analytics, AI-enabled systems can help that customer check which brand is best for their low-sodium diet, or whatever their taste profile might be.” — Glen Hartman, president and co-founder, Accenture Interactive [ read the full interview ]

“You don’t need to know how the technology of a microwave works to use it — it is simply a tool. We’re now entering the same phase with AI, thanks to the influx of no-code, point-and-click tools. AI will become a widely used utility by everyone, regardless of technical background. As a result, most of the AI applications in the coming years will be built by people with little or no AI training.” — Vitaly Gordon, co-founder and CEO, Faros AI 

AI will become a widely used utility by everyone, regardless of technical background. Vitaly Gordon 

“Companies use technologies such as deep learning to help them feed their computer networks vast quantities of information so they recognize patterns more quickly. But for all their enormous potential, current success is based on fitting to patterns of historical training data. There’s still much work to do to train models how to reason. They can only be trained to find patterns in historical data. The problem is this training data isn’t neutral — it can easily reflect the biases of the people who put it together. It can encode trends and patterns that reflect and perpetuate prejudice and harmful stereotypes.” — Timnit Gebru, founder and executive director, The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), [ read the full interview ]

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Quotes about growing workplace trends.

“Workers will need different skills to thrive in the workplace of the future. We’ll see a growing demand for advanced technological skills such as programming. Social, emotional, and higher cognitive skills — such as creativity, critical thinking, and complex information processing — will also be in demand. Growing occupations, meanwhile, will include those with difficult-to-automate activities, such as managers and doctors, as well as care workers and teachers. Training and retraining mid-career workers and new generations for the coming challenges will be another imperative.” — James Manyika, senior vice president, Google-Alphabet [ read the full interview ]

“In 1950, only 55% of the working-age population in the U.S. was employed. By 2015, that percentage had risen to 60% — representing a net increase of about 100 million jobs — after many potentially job-killing technologies had been introduced. These included shipping cranes, ATMs, and personal computer spreadsheets. The same could well be true of [AI], especially if we put into place the innovations in education that could help people adapt.” — Peter Schwartz, senior vice president, strategic planning, Salesforce [ read the full article ]

“AI is about enabling machines to augment humans — in other words, to complement human skills — rather than merely replace them. In most cases, AI’s skills are different to a human’s, so we are moving towards a symbiosis of the two.” — Robin Bordoli, partner, Authentic Ventures

“Beyond doing the right thing for their workers, companies have another reason to lean into workforce development initiatives: their own competitiveness. As demand for skills for the intelligent era heat up, so too will a war for talent.” — Sarah Franklin, CMO, Salesforce

“The shift to lifelong learning is absolutely essential. As the pace of technological change quickens, we need to be sure that employees are keeping up with the right skills to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution . That applies to both technical and soft skills. There will be changes in both areas.” — Zvika Krieger, technology advisor and former director of responsible innovation at Facebook 

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Nick Johnson works in partnership with subject matter experts within and beyond Salesforce to create original, insightful content for C-suite executives on the future of business. A published author (The Future of Marketing, Pearson), Johnson previously ran The Incite Group, and has his MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Unlock Your Potential: A Guide to Mastering Any New Skill Zig Ziglar once said, “If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.” These days, however,...

By John Rampton • Apr 11, 2024

This story originally appeared on Calendar

Zig Ziglar once said, “If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.”

These days, however, there are so many exciting things to learn, from playing the piano to coding a website and mastering a new language to the perfect sourdough starter. But how do you even get started? After all, you might feel apprehensive about diving into something completely new. Thanks to this guide, you will be equipped with the tools and strategies to master any new skill you wish to learn .

Ignite the Spark: Finding Your Motivation

Before you start your learning journey, you must identify what drives your passion, aka your intrinsic motivation .

In a nutshell, intrinsic motivation, or the internal drive to learn for the pure pleasure of it, is one of the most powerful forces in the world. Knowing your “why” will motivate you when times get tough.

In some cases, however, extrinsic motivation, such as career advancement or a personal challenge, can ignite the fire. For example, you might find a new job by learning data analysis, or maybe you’ll master the guitar so you can play for your spouse again.

It does not matter whether an intrinsic reason or an extrinsic one is valid. In the end, it’s important to choose what resonates with you most.

Charting Your Course: Setting SMART Goals

Once you know your “why,” it’s time to determine your “what” and “how.” This translates into setting SMART goals .

• Specific. Think of a programming language you want to learn instead of vaguely pledging to “learn to code.” For example, Python is good for data analysis, and JavaScript is good for web development.
• Measurable. Keep track of your progress by establishing clear milestones. For instance, try to complete three basic coding tutorials online each week.
• Attainable. Keep your expectations realistic. Learning an entire programming language in a month might seem overwhelming. To counter this, develop a series of achievable goals that build on each other.
• Relevant. Align your goals with your overall motivation. Is learning to code your ticket to achieving new career opportunities, earning more money, or developing your problem-solving skills?
• Time-bound. All goals should be given a timeframe. This will give you a sense of urgency and help you stay on track.

It’s important to remember that goals aren’t set in stone. You might find that your path shifts as you learn. You don’t have to abandon your goals entirely. However, you should adapt them accordingly.

Embrace the Power of Learning Styles

Each of us learns differently. Some people thrive in structured environments with clear instructions, while others thrive in hands-on learning environments. You should, therefore, identify what learning style you prefer to maximize your efficiency.

• Visual learners. Use diagrams, charts, videos, and mind maps. There are various ways to learn, including online courses with rich visuals or taking detailed notes with colorful diagrams.
• Auditory learners. You will learn best by listening to lectures, podcasts, and audiobooks. You might want to enroll in audio-based courses or join an online community.
• Kinesthetic learners. Their motto is “Learn by doing.” In other words, it’s all about practice. As an example, find opportunities to apply your newly acquired skills in real-life situations by attending coding workshops or language exchange meetups.

Knowing your learning style lets you choose resources and techniques that resonate with you, making the learning process more effective and enjoyable.

Embark on Your Learning Journey: A Toolkit for Success

Having set your goals, found your preferred learning style, and ignited your motivation , it’s time to dive into the exciting world of skill acquisition. Make sure, however, that you retain that knowledge. To achieve that, incorporate these valuable learning strategies into your journey:

1. Choose the right resources.

It’s no secret that the internet is full of learning materials. First, you can access free and paid online courses, e-books, tutorials, and educational blogs. Additionally, you can use platforms such as:

• For video tutorials, visit YouTube .
• Online courses can be found on Udemy or Coursera .
• Apps like Duolingo can help you learn languages.

Be sure to find reputable sources that offer clear explanations and positive reviews. Until you find resources that suit your learning style and budget, don’t hesitate to experiment with them.

2. Break it down: chunking and microlearning.

Learning a new skill can feel overwhelming. To combat this, use chunking. In other words, take complex information and break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks. This makes learning less intimidating and helps you remember more.

Another powerful tool is microlearning. Instead of putting in long hours of studying, focus on shorter, focused bursts throughout the day. You can practice a new language on your commute or complete a coding tutorial during your lunch break. It is essential to be consistent in your learning, so aim for short bursts rather than sporadic long sessions.

3. Be multi-sensory.

Learners who employ a multi-sensory approach to learning are more likely to retain and understand what they learn. Here’s why it’s effective:

• Engages more parts of the brain. A richer learning experience can be created by integrating multiple senses such as sight, hearing, touch, and movement. You gain a deeper understanding and a stronger memory by activating more brain areas.
• Benefits a diverse group of learners. There is no one-size-fits-all method of learning. Learning through a multi-sensory approach caters to all types of learners, including visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile. This approach ensures that everyone can connect with the material in their own way.
• Learning through multiple senses improves memory and motivation. It is inherently more engaging. Transforming passive learning into active exploration makes it more enjoyable and memorable .

You can incorporate a multi-sensory approach into your learning by following these steps:

• Visuals. Picture diagrams, charts, mind maps, and flashcards can be used alongside text to enhance your learning.
• Auditory. Consider listening to lectures, podcasts , audiobooks, or music about the topic. To review your explanations, record yourself and play them back.
• Kinesthetic. Don’t sit still. Consider using gestures, acting out scenarios, building models, or taking study breaks with physical activity.
• Tactile. Use your hands to take notes, manipulate objects related to the subject, or build molecules with modeling clay to demonstrate concepts.

In the end, even if you have a dominant learning style, incorporating aspects from other learning styles can enhance your learning process.

4. Leverage the Pareto Principle.

The 80/20 rule  — which is also known as the Pareto Principle, states that 20% of your efforts will result in 80% of your results. Academically, this means that fewer than 20% of your study time leads to most of your results. By leveraging the 80/20 rule, you can maximize your learning:

• The material should be understood. By understanding its core idea, you can derive the rest.
• Prioritizing key ideas. While reading the material is essential, make sure you focus most of your attention on the key points.
• Identifying the most important tasks. You can organize your tasks and time more efficiently for a more effective study session.
• Getting to know words commonly used. By learning the most commonly used words, you can boost your working vocabulary substantially.

A good example is Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Chef , in which he mentions that he was able to learn Japanese in three months, a feat that usually takes many years. By studying a sports manual, he learned the core words. Instead of learning several thousand kanji characters, he knew 214 traditional words or phrases.

As Ferriss points out, we use only a few words from a language’s complete vocabulary. To increase your working vocabulary, learn the commonly used words.

5. Be in control of your learning.

When you were a student, your teachers guided you throughout your learning journey. However, when you are self-directed, that’s not the case. Due to this, it may seem overwhelming at first.

Thankfully, there are three ways to take control of your learning:

Master the essentials (deconstruct and select).

Tim Ferriss also recommends the DiSSS method: deconstruction, Selection, Sequencing, and Stakes. In deconstruction, a skill is broken down into its fundamental elements.

Let’s take JavaScript as an example. Even though learning all the syntax might seem necessary, you can accomplish a lot with just a few basics (variables, operators, if/then rt, statements). As a result, a seemingly overwhelming task seems more manageable.

Basically, a skill’s building blocks are its essentials, so focus on them first.

Find a mentor.

When starting something new, it can be hard to determine what is crucial to learn. However, a mentor can bridge this gap.

Those who are successful tend to be generous and willing to help others. Prepare specific questions beforehand to ensure you get the most out of their time. A few conversation starters are listed below:

• When you first learned this skill, what challenges did you face?
• What aspects do you use regularly, and which are unnecessary?
• How do experts in your field differ from others?

The key to progress is practice (stop learning, start doing).

Einstein believed that excessive reading hindered creativity. To put it another way, the most valuable learning occurs when it is applied. It is more effective to practice a skill than just reading or watching tutorials to improve it.

In his book “The Talent Code,” Daniel Coyle emphasizes the importance of doing rather than passively consuming information. You should spend at least two-thirds of your time learning through application.

Once you grasp the basics, practice what you’ve learned. In the beginning, this can be difficult. Ferriss suggests “Reversal”: analyzing the final product of a skill and then retracing your steps.

Benjamin Franklin used a similar technique to improve his writing. To refine his writing style, he studied and rewrote articles from “The Spectator.” As a result, he became one of the most influential writers in America.

6. Develop chameleon-like abilities.

One of the best ways to learn a new skill is to imitate the person you admire most. For instance, watch a video and learn from what someone else has done. Copy what you observe and participate in mimicry.

In addition to learning, mimicry has been shown to be an effective tool for creating and maintaining social relationships.

7. Increase the consequences.

If you do not learn the skill you desire, you should establish some sort of punishment. For example, if you fail to meet your goals, you can take a cold shower or donate to a charity you don’t like. Alternatively, you can place a monetary bet with a friend to get the fire going.

Keep in mind, though, that reward tends to be more motivating than punishment according to many studies .

8. Focused learning: the 3x3x3 approach.

Almost everyone desires to learn and grow, but converting that desire into practical skills requires a plan. The 3x3x3 method is a simple approach based on the science of effective learning.

Don’t lose sight of what’s important.

• Three goals. Be careful not to overwhelm yourself. Identify three development goals you can achieve at once. As a result, you can concentrate your efforts and see real results.
• Three months. Decide on a timeframe for achieving your goals. An appropriate starting point would be three months. There is enough time for new habits to be established, but not so much that you lose motivation.
• Three people. Participate in your learning journey with others. Share your goals with three people. As well as providing support and feedback , they can also hold you accountable.

Why this works:

• Clear focus. It is more likely that you will succeed if you have fewer goals.
• Actionable steps. You must create a concrete action plan when you have a defined timeframe.
• Support system. The more people you involve, the more likely you will stick with your goals and celebrate your progress.

Learning is a journey.

The 3x3x3 method is a framework rather than a rigid rule. Depending on your situation, you may have a different number of goals, a different timeframe, or a different number of people. To learn effectively, you must create a system that works for you.

Embrace lifelong learning.

By using the 3x3x3 approach, you can take charge of your professional development throughout your career and continuously improve. Start your learning journey by setting goals, finding your support system, and finding resources to help you.

9. Make use of nootropics.

These cognitive boosters, which are found in natural herbal forms and supplements, are known as brain enhancers. In fact, herbal nootropics have been used in Ayurvedic traditions since ancient times to help improve learning and memory.

More recently, however, in preparation for some rigorous cramming, many students swear by nootropics for their increased focus.

10. Strengthen your endurance.

Every week, practice for a few minutes each day and build up to longer sessions.

“Beginners usually spend only 15 to 30 minutes practicing because it’s tiring,” said Jeffrey A. Greene, McMichael Family Professor in the School of Education. “As you improve, practice time can increase. Experts generally can’t practice more than four or five hours daily. It’s just too tiring.”

11. Embrace the Journey: Mistakes are Your Stepping Stones

It is rare for the path to mastery to be linear. It’s not going to be easy, and there will be times when you feel like you aren’t getting it. However, mistakes are an inevitable part of learning.

Keep your head up, and don’t let them discourage you. Instead of looking at them as obstacles, consider them opportunities to grow. Take the time to analyze your errors, learn from them, and adjust your approach accordingly. This growth mindset will accelerate your path to mastery.

12. Celebrate your victories to fuel your passion.

Learning a new skill should be challenging and rewarding. So, celebrate your victories r egardless of their size.

Are you finally getting the hang of a guitar chord? Treat yourself to a little treat, like a cappuccino. Are you now able to hold a basic conversation in Spanish? Maybe you can start planning your dream trip to Barcelona.

When you acknowledge your progress, you’ll ultimately remain motivated and excited to learn more.

What’s the most important factor for learning quickly?

It’s all about having a growth mindset. Work to improve your skills, and don’t give up if you experience setbacks.

How can I set myself up for success?

The short answer? Set clear goals.

How will this new skill help you achieve your goals? Step by step, break down large goals into smaller, more manageable ones.

Should I just stick to one learning method?

Definitely, don’t stick to just one method!

Take a multi-sensory approach. For solid learning, combine visual aids, audio, kinesthetic activities, and even tactile experiences.

How can I learn from others?

Consider finding a mentor or joining a learning group.  You can also get feedback from others and learn from their experiences.

How important is practice?

This is crucial!

However, you should practice deliberately. To avoid rote memorization, focus on the areas that are most challenging to you.

Image Credit: Pavel Danilyuk; Pexels

The post Unlock Your Potential: A Guide to Mastering Any New Skill appeared first on Calendar .

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Table of contents

9 steps to creating the best customer success journey.

Imagine you are going on a cross-country road trip without a map or GPS. You have a destination in mind, but the path to get there is unclear, fraught with unexpected turns and potential roadblocks. 

This analogy rings true for businesses navigating the complex terrain of building customer relationships, without a well-defined customer success journey. 

Today, when a staggering 89% of companies compete primarily on customer experience, a meticulously planned customer success journey isn’t just a nice-to-have. It translates to improved customer retention–-which is a big win for any business.

Just as every successful journey requires a clear route, a customer success journey demands a strategic plan that anticipates and addresses customer needs at every stage. It’s about creating an experience so seamless and rewarding that it transforms customers into advocates for your business. 

In this article, we’ll explore actionable steps to creating the best customer success journey for your business.

Table of Contents

What is a customer success journey.

A customer success journey is the complete experience a customer has with a company, from the initial awareness of a product or service to the post-purchase interactions and beyond. It’s an ongoing narrative that unfolds over time, with each chapter representing different stages of the customer’s interaction with your business.

An effective customer success journey isn’t a linear path; it’s an intricate web of experiences, emotions, and interactions that together shape the customer’s perception of your brand. At its core, a customer success journey is about creating a symbiotic relationship where customers achieve their goals using your product or service, and your business thrives through their success and advocacy. 

It’s a strategic process that requires careful planning, execution, and continuous refinement, ensuring that every customer interaction adds value and reinforces their decision to choose your brand. Let’s take a look at the nine steps to help you build the perfect customer success journey.

Whether you are building a customer success journey from scratch or looking to make strategic tweaks to your existing journey, consider these actionable steps for the job:

1. Define Customer Success Goals and Vision

As we discussed before, an effective customer success journey is about creating a symbiotic relationship with your customer. Your business thrives when customers find success with your product or service. This crucial first step involves crafting a vision that aligns with your company’s objectives and resonates deeply with what success means for your customers. 

Remember, customer success is built on three key pillars: strong relationships, a customer-first approach , and consistent value delivery. A strategic plan in this regard is essential, as it can significantly boost customer satisfaction, retention, and ultimately, the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) for your business. 

Here are some things to keep in mind while framing your customer success goals:

2. Facilitate Team Collaboration

Think of your customer success team as an orchestra. Each member plays a unique instrument, contributing to the symphony of seamless customer experience. Just as harmony is essential in an orchestra, in customer success, effective teamwork and well-defined roles are vital. 

In fact, studies show that well-coordinated teams can significantly enhance the customer experience . Some ways to boost team collaboration to create an effective customer service journey include:

With features like Notes and @mentions , you can collaborate on customer queries without juggling between multiple tools, making internal collaboration more seamless.

3. Create Detailed Customer Personas

Crafting customer personas is crucial in understanding your audience beyond basic demographics. It involves developing in-depth profiles based on real customer behaviors, motivations, and preferences. This process transforms generic audience data into actionable, empathetic profiles, allowing for more relevant and personalized customer experiences. 

Understanding your customers as real people, not just data points, is essential in tailoring your customer success strategies effectively. Here are some best practices to execute this:

Here is a sample customer persona for reference:

An example of a complete customer persona for an e-commerce website specializing in eco-friendly home goods: Name: Emma Demographics: -Gender: Woman -Age: 30 -Location: Seattle, WA -Education: Bachelor’s Degree -Job Title: Store Manager -Income: $60,000-$80,000 -Family Life: Married, expecting her first child Struggles your product/service could address: -Needs: Eco-friendly, safe products for home and baby -Motivations: To provide a healthy, environmentally-conscious lifestyle for her family -Pain Points: Difficulty in finding affordable eco-friendly products; time constraints for researching product ingredients Persona’s Journey Emma actively seeks eco-friendly products for her home and baby. She values transparency in product sourcing and appreciates educational content. Effective engagement with Emma involves clear product labeling and targeted content marketing. This streamlined version of Emma’s journey focuses on her key activities and preferences, directly relating to how your eco-friendly home goods e-commerce website can engage with her effectively.

4. Map Out All Stages of the Customer Journey

Mapping the customer journey is pivotal for a comprehensive understanding of how customers interact with your brand at each stage. This detailed mapping reveals touchpoints and transitions, helping identify areas of improvement and opportunities for enhancing the customer experience. 

By clearly charting this journey, you ensure a smooth and engaging path for your customers, leading to better engagement and satisfaction. Consider these suggestions to map out the stages of your customer success journey:

5. Identify and Align Departmental Roles at Each Stage

When mapping out a customer success journey, identifying and aligning the roles of various departments at each stage is crucial. This ensures that every team understands their specific responsibilities and how they contribute to the overall journey. Think of it as a relay race where each runner knows precisely when to pass the baton for a seamless transition.

This step is not just about assigning tasks; it’s about fostering interdepartmental synergy. When each department—from marketing to sales, from customer support to product development—understands its role in the customer journey, they can work together more effectively to create a cohesive and satisfying experience for the customer.

6. Set and Monitor Customer Milestones

Setting and monitoring customer milestones is like charting key landmarks on a traveler’s journey. These milestones help in tracking the progress of customers as they move through the different stages of the customer success journey. By identifying these significant points, businesses can better understand customer experiences and make necessary adjustments to enhance them.

It’s important to recognize that these milestones are not just about the business’s goals but should also reflect the customer’s goals and expectations. They serve as checkpoints to ensure that the customer is deriving value and moving closer to achieving their desired outcomes with your product or service.

By carefully setting and monitoring these milestones, businesses can create a more guided and fulfilling journey for their customers, leading to higher satisfaction and loyalty.

7. Leverage Data to Identify High-Impact Opportunities

When it comes to customer success, the strategic use of data is indispensable. It’s about harnessing the power of customer insights to uncover opportunities that can significantly enhance the customer experience. This step involves delving deep into customer data to uncover patterns, preferences, and pain points, thereby enabling targeted, impactful actions. Let’s take an example of an online clothing store. Data analysis reveals a significant increase in returns due to sizing issues. By digging into customer feedback and purchase patterns, the store identifies the need for a more accurate sizing guide. Implementing this reduces return rates, improves customer satisfaction, and increases repeat purchases. Here, data from customer interactions and feedback directly informs a strategic improvement in the shopping experience.

Through analyzing interactions, feedback, and behavior patterns, businesses can pinpoint areas for improvement, tailor their strategies to align with customer needs, and ultimately drive customer satisfaction and loyalty. Here’s how you can identify high-impact opportunities:

8. Outline Processes for Key Moments in the Sales Journey

Outlining processes for key moments in the sales journey ensures that every customer interaction is purposeful and impactful. This step is about identifying critical touchpoints in the sales process and defining the best ways to engage with customers at these points. 

The sales journey is often the first and most crucial part of the customer experience. How a customer perceives your brand during the sales process can set the tone for their entire journey. By having well-defined processes for key sales moments, you can ensure consistency, efficiency, and personalization, leading to higher conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Here are a few tips for doing this and building the right customer success journey:

By meticulously outlining processes for key sales moments, businesses can offer a consistent, personalized experience that resonates with customers, enhancing both their journey and the potential for long-term business growth.

9. Track Customer Success Metrics

As the final step in crafting an effective customer success journey, tracking key customer success metrics is indispensable. This process involves regularly measuring indicators like Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) , and Customer Effort Score (CES) to gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

These metrics offer tangible insights into how well a business is meeting customer expectations and highlight areas for improvement. Consistently monitoring these metrics is crucial for evaluating the success of customer-focused strategies and making informed decisions to enhance the overall customer experience. Some tips for doing so:

Effectively tracking customer success metrics completes the cycle of creating a customer success journey, ensuring that businesses are consistently aligned with customer needs and are poised to enhance their customer experiences continuously.

How to create the best customer success journey for your business?

Creating the best customer success journey is an intricate and dynamic process essential for nurturing lasting and meaningful relationships with customers. By following the nine steps outlined in this article, businesses can build a robust framework that not only meets but anticipates and exceeds customer expectations. 

Remember, the customer success journey is not a one-size-fits-all path. It requires continuous adaptation and refinement based on evolving customer needs, market trends, and business goals. The key lies in remaining customer-centric at every stage, ensuring that every interaction adds value and strengthens the relationship.

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How do we manage the change journey?

In Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change (John Wiley & Sons, 2019), McKinsey’s Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger draw on their long experience, and the most comprehensive research effort of its kind, to provide a practical, proven guide for executives managing corporate transformations. “ A better way to lead large-scale change ,” the first article in the series, explains how and why the authors’ approach works. The second, “ Getting personal about change ,”  provides an in-depth look into the mind-set shifts required for generating meaningful change.  The third, “ The forgotten step in leading large-scale change ,” examines the most often neglected stage of the change process. This fourth article discusses how to generate ownership and energy for success.

Change is a journey, and few journeys go according to plan. Leaders who follow the transformation methodology explained in our new book, Beyond Performance 2.0, take companies through what we call the five stages of performance and health. 1 The five stages, and the questions that must be answered in each of them, are aspire: Where do we want to go?; assess: How ready are we to go there?; architect: What must we do to get there?; act: How do we manage the journey?; and advance: How do we continue to improve? This article focuses on the fourth: act. To ensure that plans developed in the previous stage ( architect ) stay on track and evolve when necessary, leaders must give employees a sense of ownership in the process, as well as the energy needed to change. This article shows how.

Instilling ownership

The previous stages of our five-stage program will give employees a significant degree of ownership. But don’t assume it will continue throughout the act stage. To see that it does, establish strong governance, scale up initiatives appropriately, and monitor and adjust them as needed.

Establish strong governance

Research shows that change programs with governance structures clearly identifying roles and responsibilities are 6.4 times more likely to succeed. The vast majority of successful programs include four such elements: an executive steering committee (ESC), a change-management office (CMO), executive sponsors (ESs), and initiative owners (IOs) and their teams.

An executive steering committee typically includes the most senior leader and a senior executive team. It owns the change program’s overall direction; makes critical ongoing decisions, such as approving changes in execution plans, reallocating resources, resolving issues, and reshaping initiatives; and holds people accountable for results. When the ESC communicates the progress of change programs frequently during the act stage, they are a whopping eight times more likely to succeed.

The change-management office coordinates the overall program, tracking its progress, resolving issues, and facilitating transparent, effective interactions between the ESC and the initiatives. It seldom leads them but sometimes helps share best practices and acts as a thought partner for initiative teams. Typically, a full-time senior leader responsible for the overall change program runs the CMO. Its size depends on the transformation’s nature, but it typically includes resources for monitoring and reviewing activities, metrics, budgets, and impact, as well as for communications and change management.

Executive sponsors provide guidance, judgment, and leadership for initiative teams by reviewing their progress, helping periodically to solve problems, suggesting and validating changes to execution plans, and focusing on the business impact. They may be either members of the ESC or senior leaders, one level down, who directly own particular initiatives. The ES strives to optimize particular initiatives; the ESC, the full portfolio.

Initiatives are executed by initiative owners and their teams, who typically work for line organizations but may also come from staff functions. IOs generally help formulate the initiative charter; identify resources, operating expenses, and capital requirements; determine the scale-up approach; and develop timelines and milestones. Their responsibilities include both problem solving and people solving.

The CMO provides support and oversight. But accountability for the impact of initiatives should be placed, so far as possible, with line management and built into relevant budgets—no aspect of a change program is complete until they fully reflect it. Programs with clear roles and responsibilities are six times more likely to succeed than programs that don’t; those with effective CMOs, twice as likely.

To understand this governance model, consider the case of a retailer restructuring its global operations after quarterly losses. When an organizational-health survey identified many health issues, the CEO created an ESC comprising senior leaders from the retailer and its parent company. The retailer then created a CMO led by the respected senior manager of its most profitable business line. He enlisted one of his top performers and two respected middle managers from other departments and hired an external change expert and a retail-turnaround specialist. Each of the 25 health initiatives identified in the architect stage had an IO and ES who helped ensure that teams remained committed to targets and had the necessary resources. The teams also included part-time “project amplifiers,” who publicized initiatives to the organization and communicated its concerns back to the teams.

This clear ownership model helped the retailer to reorganize its 75,000-strong workforce and to cut costs by 12 percent within six months. The whole company’s health improved significantly. The program’s light yet robust structure was easily dismantled, and the business then took responsibility for the ongoing effort.

Choose scale-up methods

Companies implement the vast majority of initiatives by testing ideas, learning from failures, and scaling up successes quickly—an approach that limits damage, provides valuable lessons, and builds an appetite for change. But impatient organizations often implement pilots too quickly.

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change

Consider the experience of the Netherlands-based insurance group Achmea. Spurred by the government’s radical healthcare reforms, the company launched a change program in one of its divisions. The initiatives included a plan to raise the call center’s efficiency by 25 percent and to improve the customer experience. Achmea’s initial pilot was a huge success, but the company soon found that the approach of the manager who led the effort was hard to replicate because he had relied on personal influence, not new systems . As this example shows, the pilot phase should include two tests: proof of concept (to establish that an idea creates value) and proof of feasibility (to ensure replicability). Often, this second test also trains leaders for later waves of implementation. Once Achmea adopted the double-pilot approach, the change program proceeded successfully.

Companies can choose among three broad “flavors” for scaling initiatives: linear, geometric, and “big bang” (Exhibit 1). In the first, the proof-of-feasibility pilot is replicated across the organization, but no area starts until the previous one finishes. This works best if a company rolls out an initiative in only a few areas and isn’t in crisis, the stakes are high, deep dives by experts are needed, resistance to change is strong, and the tool kit and solutions require extensive customization.

In geometric scale-ups, implementation occurs in progressively bigger waves. This makes sense if multiple areas share a few common features, many areas must be transformed, a linear approach would take too long, capable implementers are readily available (or can be trained ahead of demand), and the organization can absorb the changes. In big-bang scale-ups, implementation occurs across all relevant areas at once. That takes many resources, but for a relatively short time, and makes sense if multiple areas share many features, the transformation is urgently needed, little resistance is expected, and the company can deploy a standard tool kit.

A multinational energy company, for example, used the linear approach to roll out unified HR software that replaced freestanding national systems. Senior management understood that if the company switched in one go, or even region by region, technical issues might overload the project. The new software represented a major shift, so the company also wanted to ensure that all country organizations embraced it and that concerns at any one location could be addressed before the rollout continued.

But this company chose a geometric approach to implement its new global procurement strategy. An analysis of vendor relationships uncovered similarities among markets in buying patterns and levels of procurement sophistication and vendor choice. Grouping similar markets into clusters enabled the company to increase its leverage with vendors. It then used the geometric approach to roll out the project in increasingly large groups of regions and countries. Procurement teams got up to speed quickly, approaches were progressively refined, and cost savings escalated rapidly.

Another initiative revamped public-relations processes. The company had recently experienced a crisis it hadn’t handled well, because of a decentralized approach to managing its public image. One initiative therefore centralized stakeholder management and PR, installed new policies and guidelines, and aimed to make the general public and key stakeholders aware of the company’s efforts to improve transparency and accountability. A big-bang effort fully implemented the program in two months.

Monitor progress and adjust the program dynamically

To work effectively and scale up multiple initiatives during the act stage, the CMO must provide both an initiative- and program-level view of progress and impact through relevant metrics and milestones. When it does, change programs are 7.3 times more likely to succeed. This mandate requires good data. As N. R. Narayana Murthy, former chairman of Infosys, put it, “ In God we trust; everybody else brings data to the table .”

To have a robust view of how much progress you’re making, regularly measure your change program on at least four dimensions:

• Initiative level. Track initiatives not just by time (milestones) and budget (money spent versus planned) but also by operational performance (cycle times, waste, wait times, quality).
• Health. Are management practices and their underlying mindsets and behavior shifting appropriately? Targeted analytics, surveys, focus groups, and direct observation of work sites offer a good read.
• Performance. Measure key business outcomes (revenues, costs, risks) to confirm that improvements happen where you expect and don’t cause problems elsewhere.
• Value creation. Constantly focus on the ultimate goal: shareholder (and other relevant stakeholder) value.

The particular metrics to monitor in each dimension will be specific to individual programs, but less is more: metrics often cascade into unwieldy, complex permutations. A McKinsey analysis shows that organizations use only 29 percent of the metrics they claim to follow in change efforts .

Next, decide how often to measure and review the metrics. In large-scale change programs, initiatives should be reviewed weekly by their teams; health and performance, monthly or quarterly by sponsors and steering committees; and enterprise value, once or twice a year by everyone in the program. Reviews enforce accountability, identify issues and best practices, determine remedies, spotlight successes, and instill a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

Don’t confine the monitoring and review to the past. As Telefónica de España’s former managing director and COO Julio Linares warns, “The market is going to change constantly, and because of that you need to make a constant effort to adapt to the market. Of course, some parts of the program will end, but new ones will come up.” Change programs led by CMOs that adjust them as needed are 4.6 times more likely to succeed. 2 McKinsey global transformational-change survey of 2,314 executives, conducted in January 2010.

No matter how well you plan initiatives during the architect stage, some will probably flounder when you get to act: 28 percent of well-planned initiatives don’t deliver the results forecast , so the CMO should expect to redirect or stop some initiatives, launch new ones, and reallocate resources quickly. Our data show that, on average, the execution end dates of 31 percent of initiatives change once , 28 percent twice, and 19 percent three times. The CMO’s role is to ensure that this happens for the right reasons, with rigorous problem solving and no last-minute delays or surprises—a reason to monitor metrics weekly.

Health: Generating energy

During change programs, employees must conduct everyday business while changing the way it’s done. That additional work requires additional energy, so change leaders must ensure that programs generate more of it during the act stage than they consume. Change leaders can create energy by mobilizing influencers, making change programs personal for a critical mass of leaders, and engaging the workforce with two-way communications.

Mobilize influencers

Senior leaders aren’t the only people who guide employees; influencers deep in organizations can disproportionately affect their colleagues’ energy levels  if a change program excites them. Regardless of their official title or status, they draw power from the many personal contacts who respect and emulate them. Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller The Tipping Point 3 Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 2000. describes three types: “mavens” accumulate knowledge and share advice, “connectors” know many people, and “salespeople” can naturally persuade others. Our research indicates that engaging influencers in change programs makes them 3.8 times more likely to succeed.

Consider the example of a change program for maternal healthcare in Africa. No traditional form of intervention (such as pamphlets) worked. Eventually, the leaders realized that hairdressers were extremely influential—hair salons were among the few places where young women could talk about the health of mothers. When the campaign refocused on hairdressers, the message got through.

You can find these sometimes-hidden influencers through social-network analysis (Exhibit 2). One application—“snowball sampling”—uses techniques social scientists developed to study hidden populations: two- to three-question surveys ask employees to nominate (anonymously) three to five people whose advice they respect. These five are also surveyed, and the survey ends when names are repeated—often, after only three to four rounds. Leaders frequently find the results surprising because influence patterns rarely reflect organizational charts.

Companies can mobilize influence leaders effectively in many ways–for example, enrolling them in pilots. At the very least, create a two-way pipeline giving influencers early access to information, so that you gather important feedback on the program’s implementation. By using this group to refine new ideas, you can also increase the effectiveness and acceptance of the ideas you implement.

Make change personal for a critical mass of leaders

Mindsets created by an old stimulus last far longer than the stimulus itself, so if you rely solely on changes in the work environment (a new stimulus) to shift mindsets, you’ll wait a long time. What’s more, changes to the work environment won’t affect everyone similarly. Finally, and perhaps most vexingly, to change the work environment, programs must rely partly on leaders to role model the new behavior, even in the absence of any significant external stimulus. Companies must therefore recognize that the biggest barrier to personal change is overcoming the propensity to see other people as the problem.

At one company, for example, we asked leaders to estimate how much time they spent tiptoeing around other people’s egos. Most said 20 to 30 percent. Then we asked these leaders how much time an employee might spend tiptoeing around their egos. Most were silent. Our research shows that 86 percent of leaders claim to role model behavioral changes, but only 53 percent of the people who report to them agree.

Our journey to find ways of kick-starting change among leaders has led to the development of what we call personal-insight workshops (PIWs), which mostly take place offsite, in groups of 20 to 30, over a couple of days. During PIWs, facilitators who understand the principles of adult learning and human-potential techniques take participants through the “U-process,” which involves three phases.

The first, sensing, typically takes 30 percent of the workshop’s time. Participants explore the company’s change story  in the context of their own. During the second phase, presencing, which typically accounts for some 40 percent of the workshop’s time, the session turns further inward.

Participants examine their beliefs about what’s possible in the workplace, reflecting on questions such as “when do I feel in the ‘flow’ and what takes me out of it, into fight-, flight-, or freeze-type responses?” “What has conditioned me to respond in this way?” “Can I respond in a different way if I frame situations differently?” “What are the benefits and risks if I do?” “How would these different ways of thinking and acting create a more powerful personal legacy?” “How does all this link to the bigger organizational change discussed in the sensing phase?” These techniques help participants to understand their attitudes toward (and more fully embrace) the change program’s organizational mindset and behavior shifts and therefore increase their impact as role models.

Now the U-process enters its third phase: realizing, which typically accounts for 30 percent of the workshop’s time. Here participants decide how they will apply the insights from the previous phase in their day-to-day work, how to use their personal networks to mobilize support, and what the group will do collectively.

Companies will see material shifts in the leadership’s role-modeling impact once a critical mass of 25 to 30 percent of their people leaders attend such programs. At this point, many leaders are replacing the “if only they would change” mentality with the ethos of “if it’s to be, it’s up to me,” so that it becomes contagious and spreads to the whole population. 4 For example, see Andrea Baronchelli, Joshua Becker, Devon Brackbill, and Damon Centola, “Experimental evidence for tipping points in social convention,” Science, June 2018, Volume 360, Number 6393: pp. 1116–19, science.sciencemag.org. Not every successful change program uses PIW techniques, but in our experience every change program that did succeeded. In particular, we’ve seen PIWs thaw the change-resistant “frozen middle” of managers more quickly and effectively than any other approach.

Use high-impact two-way communications

The final element of the act stage—high-impact two-way communications that energize the organization—makes change programs four times more likely to succeed. Consider an experiment involving two groups of people: “tappers” and “listeners.” 5 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, “The curse of knowledge,” Harvard Business Review, December 2006, hbr.org. In a preparatory session, the tappers were told they would drum out the rhythm of famous tunes, such as “Happy Birthday to You,” with their fingers. The listeners would have to guess what it was. Then the experimenters asked the tappers to predict what proportion of the songs the listeners would identify correctly. They guessed half. The actual result was 2.5 percent. As the tappers tapped, they became visibly frustrated with the bewildered listeners. The lesson: if you know something, you find it hard to imagine not knowing it—“the curse of knowledge.”

We constantly see it at work in change programs. Leaders who have been deeply involved in creating the change story assume that others will absorb it quickly. But when anyone first hears the story, what leaders consider carefully crafted messages come across as disconnected ideas. To break the curse, use a combination of four approaches.

First, leaders who retell a story should understand what it’s like to hear it for the first time by testing it on others. Second, make the message stick by relentlessly repeating simple, memorable language; Walmart’s “ten-foot rule,” for example, supports customer service by reminding frontline employees that whenever they are within ten feet of a customer, they should look him or her in the eye, smile, and ask how they can help. As Willie Walsh, who has been chief executive of several airline companies, puts it, “The simpler the message, the easier it is to deliver. The simpler the message, the more likely it is to be consistent. The simpler the message, the easier it is to control and manage the communication.” 6 Personal interview.

A third way is to move from “telling” to “asking,” which uses even chance encounters effectively. Emerson Electric’s CEO David Farr asks virtually all employees he meets four questions: “How do you make a difference?,” “What improvement ideas are you working on?,” “When did you last get coaching from your boss?,” and “Who is the enemy?” 7 The right answer is competitors, not some other department. This way of engaging employees has far more impact than simply exhorting them about the company’s health themes: alignment, continuous improvement, coaching, and collaboration.

The fourth way of overcoming the curse is to ensure that many channels—speech, print, online, symbols, rituals—reinforce your messages. In fact, the best two-way communications programs not only tell the same story through multiple channels but also tell different aspects of it through different channels. Companies should use channels creatively—particularly social media. We’ve seen successful two-way communications strategies involving blogs, tweets, videos, podcasts, “jams,” 8 Online, topical, time-bound problem-solving sessions often involving thousands of employees. and online Wiki-like resource centers tailored to employee segments. These become even more powerful when interwoven with in-person formats, such as large group offsites and unannounced visits.

Equally important, create bottom-up channels. When Lisa Hook was Neustar’s CEO, she sponsored a video competition to communicate the company’s performance-and-health strategy. Employees submitted videos and voted for them online; the executive committee chose the winner and the CEO presented an award. Likewise, during a change program in the early 2000s, employees of the Australian telecommunications company Telstra created a “rogue” comic strip to challenge cynicism about a change program. The corporate center can seed such bottom-up efforts, but they must spread autonomously. Infrastructure and funding may be needed, and some companies give influence leaders a small budget and a mandate to “start a fire” (create energy for change).

Some powerful channels for changing mindsets and generating energy are often underutilized—for instance, new rituals. When a mining company made safety a theme of its change program, it started meetings with announcements about emergency exits and safety hazards. Another underutilized channel is the outside world. As Banca Intesa’s former CEO Corrado Passera reflects, internal results matter little “if everyone keeps reading in the newspapers that the business is still a poor performer, is not contributing to society, or is letting down the country as a whole.” Change leaders should look for ways of leveraging customers, users, and other stakeholders to generate energy for change.

Organizations can maximize a multichannel strategy’s power by starting with an employee segment and mapping its change-experience journey. Employees may, for example, learn about the change program in an offsite interactive story-cascade session, read about it on the company’s home page, and see posters about it on walls at work. At home, they may learn about it in the press. Next, they could take part in a skill-building “field and forum” journey to improve as change leaders. Eventually, they will notice how changing structures, processes, systems, and incentives are realizing the change story’s vision and plan. Employees experience a coherent, reinforcing journey taking them from their previous mindsets and behavior toward those needed to make change programs succeed.

Masterstroke: Motivate through social contracts

In each of our five stages of performance and health, we emphasize a masterstroke: counterintuitive lessons from the field of predictable irrationality. Discounting them causes frustration and delay; leveraging them can greatly accelerate a change program’s impact. In this, the act stage, the masterstroke involves incentives.

Conventional wisdom is clear: if compensation isn’t linked to the objectives of a change program, employees believe that it isn’t important. Unfortunately, however, the upside to linking change objectives to financial compensation is generally limited, practically and psychologically. In practice, compensation can rise only within limits and reflects many metrics: overall company performance, the P&L of individual areas, and so forth. No one metric affects overall results significantly. Changing a company’s approach to compensation is also hard—typically requiring board approval—and unintended consequences may ensue.

From a psychological standpoint, the benefit of increased income on happiness greatly decreases beyond $75,000 a year. Besides, financial incentives become less effective the more organizations use them. 9 Angus Deaton and Daniel Dahneman, “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 107, Number 38, September 2010, pp. 16,489–93. Fortunately, leaders needn’t rely heavily on compensation to drive change; they can stimulate motivation by using what the field of predictable irrationality calls a social—not a market—exchange. Say you go to someone’s house for dinner and afterward ask your host how much money you owe her. The offer of money changes a social interaction into a cringeworthy market transaction. Yet if you had brought your host a bottle of good wine, she would have accepted it gladly. A gift is a symbol of long-term, reciprocal social norms rather than short-term, transactional market norms. 10 Dan Ariely, Predictable Irrationality: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, New York: HarperCollins, 2008.

This social approach to shaping behavior is cheaper and often more effective. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), for example, once asked lawyers to give discounted prices to retirees. The lawyers declined. Then the AARP, understanding the lesson we have described, went to other lawyers and asked them to work free of charge. Most agreed. 11 Michael J. Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012. Compensation invoked market norms; pro-bono work, social ones.

The best change leaders use small, unexpected nonfinancial rewards and recognition to great effect. When John McFarlane was CEO of ANZ bank, he gave every employee a bottle of champagne for Christmas, and that had far more impact than a bonus equaling the champagne’s cost. As CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi sent thoughtful, hand-written letters praising her top team not only to its members but also to their spouses, creating enormous additional motivation for change. You can take people to lunch, leave laudatory Post-it Notes for them, or give them public recognition among their peers. As Walmart founder Sam Walton said, “Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free—and worth a fortune.” 12 Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made in America, New York: Bantam, 1993.

The first three stages of the change journey ( aspire, assess, and architect ) typically take months; the act stage, years. Don’t count on the initial excitement to last; instead, generate energy and create ownership methodically to keep your change program on the right path throughout its twists and turns. We often liken the act stage to sports. When a team takes the field, it has a game plan, but once the whistle blows, points rarely come from well-rehearsed plays. The ability to improvise within the game plan usually makes the difference between winning and losing, in sports and business alike.

Scott Keller is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Southern California office, and Bill Schaninger is a senior partner in the Philadelphia office.

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The 4 Pillars of Successful Digital Transformations

• Nathan Furr,
• Andrew Shipilov,
• Didier Rouillard,
• Antoine Hemon-Laurens

A framework to help leaders decide where to invest.

Digital transformation can mean a lot of different things. For leaders, it can be hard to know where you should be focusing investment — and what kind of digital transformation you’re really after. The authors outline four pillars of digital transformation: IT uplift, digitizing operations, digital marketing, and new ventures. Which pillar is the right starting point for your company depends on your context, needs, but also your digital maturity.

Despite years of discussion, understanding what digital transformation means for established companies remains a daunting challenge. Leaders put in charge of a digital transformation feel pulled in many different directions, with competing demands from IT, marketing, sales, and operations. Without a clear understanding, the wrong people are often put in charge, with the wrong resources, and the wrong KPIs, setting the digital transformation project up for failure.

• Nathan Furr is a Professor of Strategy at INSEAD and a coauthor of five best-selling books, including The Upside of Uncertainty, The Innovator’s Method, Leading Transformation, Innovation Cap i tal , and Nail It then Scale It .
• Andrew Shipilov is a John H. Loudon Chaired Professor of International Management at INSEAD. He is a coauthor of Network Advantage: How to Unlock Value From Your Alliances and Partnerships .
• DR Didier Rouillard is the Corporate VP of Quadient, a customer experience software company operating globally.
• AH Antoine Hemon-Laurens is Senior DigitalNOW! partner at Quadient.

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Inspiration

50 best quotes to inspire you on your journey towards success.

Achieving success is a process, not an event. It’s a journey , and journeys are more often than not, long and rife with difficulties and unexpected challenges. The great news is, if you’re currently struggling with your dreams and goals at the moment, you can take comfort in the knowledge that it is all part of the process. With that having been said, we are publishing this list of uplifting quotes to inspire you on your journey towards success.

So, if you’re looking for some inspiring quotes to encourage you on your journey of success, then let’s dive into these inspiring success journey quotes.

MOST INSPIRING JOURNEY TO SUCCESS QUOTES

1. “Success is not a destination, it’s a journey” – Zig Ziglar

2. “The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.” – Tony Robbins

3. “The beautiful journey of today can only begin when we learn to let go of yesterday.” – Steve Maraboli

4. “The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance, and then even the small steps and the little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.” – Oprah Winfrey

5. “Success is never final. Failure is never fatal.” – Winston Churchill

“Success is never final. Failure is never fatal.” – Winston Churchill

6. “Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.” – Bill Bradley

7. “Not everyone will understand your journey, and that’s okay, because you are here to make progress, not to make everyone understand.” – Success Journey Quote

8. “Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” – Arthur Ashe

9. “Success doesn’t come from what you do occasionally. It comes from what you do consistently.” – Marie Forleo

10. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” – Lao Tzu

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” – Lao Tzu

11. “If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl, but by all means, keep moving.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

12. “It’s all about the journey not the outcome.” – Carl Lewis

13. “Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.” – Bobby Unser

14. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber

15. “Success is a journey. The best form of transport is happiness.” – Roy Smoothe

“Success is a journey. The best form of transport is happiness.” – Roy Smoothe

16. “Don’t expect anyone to understand your journey, especially if they’ve never walked your path.” – Anonymous

17. “The journey towards success is not always easy or upwards.” – Eugine Bouchard

18. “Patience, persistence and perspirations make an unbeatable combination for success.” – Napoleon Hill

19. “To me, the best part of success, is the journey!” – Latif Mercado

20. “Failure is often part of the journey to success.” – Anonymous

“Failure is often part of the journey to success.” – Anonymous

21. “Life’s too short not to enjoy the journey to success. And success starts with taking care of yourself. We only get one chance at life—why not reach our fullest potential? – Jim Rohn

22. “Sometimes the people around you won’t understand your journey. They don’t need to, it’s not for them.” – Success Journey Quote

23. “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” – Estee Lauder

24. “I use pain to push me to greatness.” – Eric Thomas

25. “Celebrate what you’ve accomplished, but raise the bar a little higher each time you succeed.” – Mia Hamm

“Celebrate what you’ve accomplished, but raise the bar a little higher each time you succeed.” – Mia Hamm

26. “You know you are on the right track when you have no interest in looking back.” – Anonymous

27. “In the journey to success, tenacity of purpose is supreme.” – Aliko Dangate

28. “The end of a journey means that start of another one.” – Anonymous

29. “There are no secrets to success. [Success] is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” – Colin Powell

30. “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – Milton Berle

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – Milton Berle

31. Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” – Matsuo Basho

32. “There is only one map to the journey of life and it lives within your heart.” – Willie Nelson

33. “Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” – Anonymous

34. “Achievement seems to be connected with action . Successful men and women keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.” – Conrad Hilton

35. “Who you are tomorrow begins with what you do today.” – Tim Fargo

“Who you are tomorrow begins with what you do today.” – Tim Fargo

36. “Your life journey is about learning to become more of who you are and fulfilling the highest, truest expression of yourself as a human being.” – Oprah Winfrey

37. “Sometimes the longest journey we make is sixteen inches from our heads to our hearts.” – Elena Avila

38. “When setting out on a journey, do not seek advice from those who have never left home.” – Rumi

39. “Success is about dedication. You may not be where you want to be or do what you want to do when you’re on the journey. But you’ve got to be willing to have vision and foresight that leads you to an incredible end.” – Usher

40. “Success is a journey, not a destination. It requires constant effort, vigilance and reevaluation.” – Mark Twain

“Success is a journey, not a destination. It requires constant effort, vigilance and reevaluation.” – Mark Twain

41. “The road to success is always under construction.” – Anonymous

42. “Success is in the journey, but the reward is the view from the top.” – Larry Stevens

43. “Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself .” – Lolly Daskal

44. “Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.” – Greg Anderson

45. “I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side.” – Anonymous

“I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side.” – Anonymous

46. “Peace is the best journey. Happiness is the best destination.” – Ragu

47. “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

48. “Success for me isn’t a destination it’s a journey. Everybody’s working to get to the top but where is the top? It’s all about working harder and getting better and moving up and up.” – Rihanna

49. “Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

50. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can .” – Arthur Ashe

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – Arthur Ashe

Bonus Success Journey Quote

Bonus: Alright, here is our last quote to inspire you on your journey to success.

“Stay Patient and Trust The Journey.”

Final Thoughts

You’ve made it to the end of our success journey quotes list and we hope you are a little more inspired than when you arrived. If you enjoyed a quote or two, please share them with someone who could use a few encouraging words on their journey towards success.

That said, thanks for stopping and come back soon.

Until you reach your aims,

PS – If you enjoyed our Journey to Success Quotes, then you’ll love these Quotes on Success and Acheivement.

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50+ SECRET OF SUCCESS QUOTES TO GUIDE YOU TO GREATER SUCCESS

35 MILLIONAIRE FASTLANE QUOTES TO ACCELERATE YOUR SUCCESS

The STRIVE is on a mission to inspire and uplift 1 billion people by 2032. Our primary aim is to help as many people as possible believe in the uncommon thought, that they can be more than they are, do more than they've done, and achieve more prosperity than they've ever dreamed possible. Let's achieve the impossible together.

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100+ LIFE GOES ON QUOTES TO KEEP YOU INSPIRED FOR YOUR BETTER FUTURE

If you’re in need of a few words of encouragement or some helpful life goes on quotes, then this page is for you.

Life constantly throws curve balls. Setbacks and major challenges are a part of life. But sometimes, no matter how much we prepare ourselves for those obstacles, they still have the ability to devastate our lives and derail our best plans. And they do, especially for those who are slow to embrace their setbacks, and realize that life always goes on.

With that said, we know that the best way to get back on track and moving towards our better brighter futures quickly, is to keep looking forward, to stay optimistic, and to continually embrace the fact that life goes on. As such, we’ve pulled together this powerful list of Life Goes On quotes to help people stay inspired and hopeful for the promise of a better future.

So, if you are currently experiencing any setbacks in your life, or if things have been looking bleak lately, allow some of these Life Goes On quotes to convince you that your better future is just around the corner, because it is…..

Best Life Goes On Quotes

1. “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” – Robert Frost

2. “Life is like the waves on the ocean, it keeps going.” – Anonymous

3. “If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.” – Paulo Coelho

4. “Things change. Stuff happens. Life goes on.” – Elizabeth Scott

5. “Removing someone out of your life can hurt like a knife but sometimes, it may be the only way for you to survive.” – Mouloud Benzadi

6. “No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.” – Maya Angelou

7. “To help yourself, you must be yourself. Be the best that you can be. When you make a mistake, learn from it, pick yourself up and move on.” – Dave Plezer

8. “Sometimes you’re flush and sometimes you’re bust, and when you’re up, it’s never as good as it seems, and when you’re down, you never think you’ll be up again, but life goes on.” – George Jung

9. “When you lose what you love, remember to stay strong. Look out the window and remember life goes on.” – Drew Chadwick

10. “I walk slowly, but I never walk backwards.” – Abraham Lincoln

11. “You can’t keep blaming somebody else for your dysfunction. Life is really about moving on.” – Oprah Winfrey

12. “Regardless of how it goes down, life goes on.” – Rick Ross

13. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein

14. “Remember, whether you choose to move on or stay stuck in the past, life goes on!” – Billy Cox   

15. “We can throw stones, complain about them, stumble on them, climb over them, or build with them.” – William Arthur Ward

16. “Mistakes do happen and life goes on.” – Sourav Ganuly

17. “Life goes by too quickly. So laugh, love, and try new things. Forgive, forget and don’t hold grudges.” – Anymous

18. “We take nothing away and we put nothing back, we pass by and we forget; And the sun is always punctual every day.” – Alberto Caeiro

19. “Life goes on, even when you think it can’t. Even when you don’t especially want it to.” – Jan Strand

20. “Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.” – Jose Ortega Gasset

21. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” – Seneca

22. “Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.” – Herman Hesse

23. “Life goes on, but the scars remain.” – Lil Wayne

24. “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” – Epictetus

25. “You carry on no matter what are the obstacles. You simply refuse to give up — and, when the going gets tough, you get tougher. And, you win.” – Vince Lombardi

26. “You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.” – Life Goes On Quote

27. “Keep moving forward.” – Walt Disney

28. “Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.” – Dalai Lama

29. “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.” – Lao Tzu

30. “Life goes on if you’re one of the lucky ones.” – Judy Blume

31. “It’s hard to turn the page when you know someone won’t be in the next chapter, but the story must go on.” – Thomas Wilder

32. “This moment is but another chance to change your life. Cease brooding about the past, realize that life will go on, and go confidently in the direction of your dreams.” – Anonymous

33. “There is no passion to be found playing small — in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” – Nelson Mandela

34. “Do something today for a better tomorrow.” – Anonymous

35. “ It’s never too late  to be who you might have been.” – George Eliot

36. “People change and things go wrong but just remember life goes on.” – Mac Miller

37. “God gave us rain to remind us that life will not always be sunny but it will keep going on.” – Anonymous

38. “If something does go wrong, here is my advice… keep calm and carry on.” – Maira Kalman

39. “I’ll be strong, I’ll be wrong, oh but life goes on. Oh, I’m just a girl, trying to find a place in this world.” – Taylor Swift

40. “There’s no time for regrets. You’ve just got to keep moving forward.” – Mike McCready

41. “Even though we have been hurt, we must find a way to get through it, life goes on whether we want it to or not. The world keeps turning no matter how bad we feel. This is why we have to learn how to bounce back and keep moving forward.” – Rashida Rowe

42. “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.

43. “You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.” – Charles Kettering

44. “Surrender to what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be.” – Sonia Ricotti

45. “Everyday is the opportunity for a better tomorrow.” – Hugh Laurie

46. “Life goes on, and one should look ahead and not backward.” – Sonali Bendre

47. “If you’re not okay, that’s okay. It will happen sometimes. But you have to tell yourself that things will be better tomorrow. Eve if they’re not better tomorrow, keep telling yourself they will be. Because eventually, tomorrow will be better .” – Sam Miller

48. “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” – Allen Saunders

49. “You can’t stop living just because it hurts. Life goes on and so should you!” – Anonymous

50. “Morning will come, it has no choice.” – Marty Rubin

Halfway There: You’re more than halfway through these life goes on quotes, great job! This next section consists of quotes about life goes on as well, but, they are more focused more on inspiring you. We hope they succeed in doing so.

51. “It’s always darkest before the dawn. So hold on to hope and be strong because it doesn’t last forever this darkness.” – Astrid Alauda

52. “It is not what happens that determines the major part of your future. What happens, happens to us all. It is what you do about what happens that counts.” – Jim Rohn

53. “One thing always sure. Life goes on with you or without you, no matter how much you have seen.” – Lalita Tademy

54. “As life goes on, the more you allow any negativity to consume your thoughts, the less room you have for positivity to enter them.” – Demi Lovato

55. “We can’t become what we need to be by remaining what we are.” – Oprah Winfrey

56.  “Head up. Shoulders back. Tomorrow is a new day.” – Anonymous

57. “Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.” – Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe

58. “We cannot control the wind but we can adjust our sails.” – Anonymous

59. “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

60. “Tomorrow the sun will rise on all your doubts.” – Marty Rubin

61. “Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny.” – Steve Maraboli

62. “Life isn’t about waiting around for things that happen tomorrow. It’s about what we do right now while were alive!” – Anonymous

63. “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – E.E Cummings

64. “Whether you choose to move on from your struggles and enjoy life or waddle in your misery, life will continue.” – Germany Kent

65. “Life goes on. People move on, but God remains on your side.” – Gift Gugu Mona

66. “Accidents happen. Our bones shatter, our skin splits, our hearts break. We burn, we drown, we stay alive.” – Moïra Fowley-Doyle

67. “You cannot be truly humble, unless you truly believe that life can and will go on without you.” – Mokokoma Mokhonoana

68. “Empires collapse, civilizations disappear, health deteriorates, and bodies turn to ash, but life will always go on” – Mouloud Benzadi

69. “The biggest thing I’ve learned is to smash my own spiders and get on with my day. There will be another!” – Hoda Kotb

70. “In the end, we all become stories.” – Anonymous

71. “There’s always tomorrow and it always gets better.” – Ariana Grande

72. “If you fail today there is always tomorrow to try again. You always have that second chance tomorrow.” – Avina Celeste

73. “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can .” – Anonymous

74. “Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forwards.” – Soren Kierkegaard

75. “Mistakes happen and life goes on.” – Sourav Ganguly

76. “Sooner or later we’ve all got to let go of our past.” – Dan Brown

77. “Note to self: Nobody is worth stressing over. Move on, leave people behind and go find yourself. The world is your. Life goes on.” – Anonymous

78. “Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over.” – Guy Finley

79. “Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.” – Roy T. Bennett

80. “You can’t turn the clock back, so you have to look ahead.” – Mel Gibson

81. “The longer your life goes on, the more death you face.” – Patrick Swayze

82. “Trust the wait. Embrace the uncertainty. Enjoy the beauty of becoming. When nothing is certain, anything is possible.” – Anonymous

83. “Don’t forget you’re simply human. It’s okay to have a meltdown, just don’t unpack and live there. Cry it out and then refocus on where you are headed. Life goes on.” – Anonymous

84. “Cry. Forgive. Learn. Move on. Let your tears water the seeds of your future happiness.” – Steve Maraboli

85. “The beginning is always today.” – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

86. “Life is about change. Sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes it’s beautiful. But most of the time, it’s both.” – Lana Lang

87. “As long as you’re still alive, you always have the chance to start again.” – Emily Acker

88. “Be strong, because things will get better. It might be stormy now, but it never rains forever.” – Anonymous

89. “Be strong, because things will get better. It might be stormy now, but it never rains forever.” – Anonymous

90. “Through every dark night, there’s a bright day after that, so no matter how hard it get, stick your chest out, keep your head up, and handle it.” – Tupac Shakur

91. “Life doesn’t stop for anybody.” – Kevin Hart

92. “Never underestimate the power you have to take your life in a new direction.” – Germany Kent

93 . “… of all things this was the saddest, that life goes on: if one leave’s one’s lover, life should stop for him, and if one disappears from the world, then the world should stop, too: and it never did. And that was the real reason for most people getting up in the morning: not because it would matter but because it wouldn’t.” – Truman Capote

94. “One day the world stopped without any warning, spring didn’t know how to wait, showed up not even a minute late.” – BTS

95. “Nothing is permanent. Not even the end of the world.” – Isaac Marion

96. “The sky is blue, the grass is green and life will go on.” – Aly Aubrey

97. “I will go anywhere as long as it is forward.” – David Livingston

98. “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them — that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” – Lao Tzu

99. “There is nothing permanent except change.” – Heraclitus

100. “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.” – Richard Bach

Bonus Life Goes on Quote

Bonus: Here is our last and final Life Goes on Quote. We hope it will inspire you to shake off your past, and look forward to the promise of a better future:

 “Stop Acting As If Life Is A Rehearsal. Live This Day As If It Were Your Last. The Past Is Over And Gone. The Future Is Not Guaranteed.” – wayne dyer –

Related: Moving On Quotes

We hope you enjoyed these inspirational Life Goes On quotes. Please consider sharing this page or a quote or two with someone who could might appreciate a few encouraging words that life does indeed go on, and that tomorrow is a new day.

With that said, thanks for stopping by.

Till next time,

PS – If you enjoyed our Life Goes On Quotes then you’ll love these inspirational quotes about life and struggles .

50 INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES FROM THE OBSTACLE IS THE WAY

Dream chasing is not for the faint of heart. Not only does it take massive courage to reach for the dreams and goals that many shrug off as impossible, but it also takes grit, tenacity, and an almost god-like will power to see things through. Indeed, success demands the overcoming of obstacles. And having and handful of powerful quotes to inspire you to keep moving forward against all odds is wise. As such, we’ve decided to publish the best The Obstacle Is The Way quotes to inspire you to succeed in the face of failure.

So, if you’re a fellow dreamer, or an aspiring high achiever, these inspiring words will keep you going strong. And if you’re ready to get started, let’s dive in.

50 Best Quotes From The Obstacle is The Way

1. “It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit. To know you want to quit but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you’ve decided to lay siege to in your own life—that’s persistence.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

2. “To argue, to complain, or worse, to just give up, these are choices. Choices that more often than not, do nothing to get us across the finish line.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

3. “Failure shows us the way—by showing us what isn’t the way.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

4. “You know what’s better than building things up in your imagination? Building things up in real life.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

5. “ Uncertainty and fear are relieved by authority. Training is authority. It’s a release valve.” – Ryan, Holiday The Obstacle is The Way

6. “Remember that this moment is not your life, it’s just a moment in your life.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

7. “He knew that to aim low meant to accept mediocre accomplishment. But a high aim, if things went right, create something extraordinary.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

8. “Like Earhart, Rommel knew from history that those who attack problems and life with the most initiative and energy usually win .” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

9. “We talk a lot about courage as a society, but we forget that at its most basic level it’s really just taking action—whether that’s approaching someone you’re intimated by or deciding to finally crack a book on a subject you need to learn.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

10. “Genius often really is just persistence in disguise.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

11. “It doesn’t matter whether this is the worst time to be alive or the best, whether you’re in a good job market or a bad one, or that the obstacle you face is intimidating or burdensome. What matters is that right now is right now.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

12. “It’s a huge step forward to realize that the worst thing to happen is never the event, but the event and losing your head.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

13. “Problems are rarely as bad as we think—or rather, they are precisely as bad as we think.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

14. “This is one thing all great men and women of history have in common. Like oxygen to a fire, obstacles became fuel for a blaze that was their ambition. Nothing could stop them, they were (and continue to be) impossible to discourage or contain. Every impediment only served to make the inferno within them burn with greater ferocity.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

15. “We blame our bosses, the economy, our politicians, other people, or we write ourselves off as failures or our goals as impossible. When really only one thing is at fault: our attitude and approach .” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

16. “The most harmful dragon we chase is the one that makes us think we can change things that are simply not ours to change.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

17. “It’s supposed to be hard. Your first attempts aren’t going to work. It’s going to take a lot out of you- but energy is an asset we can always find more of. It’s a renewable resource. Stop looking for an epiphany, and start looking for weak points. Stop looking for angels, and start looking for angels. There are options. Settle in for the long haul and then try each and every possibility, and you’ll get there.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

18. “You’ll have far better luck toughening yourself up, than you ever will trying to take the teeth out of a world that is, at best, indifferent to your existence” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

19. “The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

20. “Think progress, not perfection.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

21. “Today most of our obstacles are internal, not external.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

22. “Like any good school, learning from failure isn’t free. The tuition is paid in discomfort or loss and having to start over.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

23. “The good thing about true perseverance is that it can’t be stopped by anything besides death.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

24. “Each time, you’ll learn something. Each time, you’ll develop strength, wisdom, and perspective. Each time, a little more of the competition falls away. Until all that is left is you: the best version of you.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

25. “Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

26. “The one way to guarantee we don’t benefit from failure—to ensure it is a bad thing – is to not learn from it.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

27. “Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.” – Andy Grove, The Obstacle is The Way

28. “Persist in your efforts. Resist giving in to distraction, discouragement, or disorder.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

29. “Failure puts you in corners you have to think your way out of. It is a source of breakthroughs.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

30. “The things that hurt, instruct.” – Benjamin Franklin , The Obstacle is The Way

31. “If you think it is simply enough to take advantage of the opportunities that arise in your life, you will fall short of greatness. Anyone sentient can do that. What you must do is learn how to press forward precisely when everyone around you sees disaster.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

32. “ True will is quiet humility, resilience , and flexibility; the other kind of will is weakness disguised as bluster and ambition. See which lasts longer under the hardest of circumstances.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

33. “Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing and wherever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well. That’s our primary duty. And our obligation.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

34. “There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

35. “We forget: In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

36. “Failure really can be an asset if what you’re trying to do is improve, learn, or do something new.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

37. “No one said you can’t ever cry. Forget ‘manliness.’ If you need to take a moment, by all means, go ahead. Real strength lies in the control or, as Nassim Taleb put it, the domestication of one’s emotions, not in pretending they don’t exist.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

38. “If an emotion can’t change the condition or the situation you’re dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one. But it’s what I feel. Right, no one said anything about not feeling it.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

39. “Death doesn’t make life pointless, but rather purposeful.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

40. “Blessings and burdens are not mutually exclusive.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

41. “How we interpret the events in our lives, our perspective, is the framework for our forthcoming response—whether there will even be one or whether we’ll just lie there and take it.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

42. “First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

43. “An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before. To them, the idea that no one has ever done this or that is a good thing.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

44. “The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

45. “Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

46. “Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

47. “There are far more failures in the world due to a collapse of will than there will ever be from objectively conclusive external events.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

48. “You will come across obstacles in life—fair and unfair. And you will discover, time and time again, that what matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

49. “Our perceptions determine, to an incredibly large degree, what we are and are not capable of. In many ways, they determine reality itself. When we believe in the obstacle more than in the goal, which will inevitably triumph?” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

50. “We decide what story to tell ourselves. Or whether we will tell one at all.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

Bonus Obstacle is The Way Quote

“Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is The Way

Related: Best Stoic Quotes

There you have it friend, 50 of the best quotes from The Obstacle is The Way . Study these remarkable quotes, and then put them into action in your daily life. Certainly the few gems we shared on this page should be enough to at least get you started on smashing through some of those daily obstacles we all face in life.

Lastly, if there is one book we would recommend to all entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, or even big dreamers who find themselves deep into the fire and fury that inevitably follows such pursuits, it would be the book we derived these great quotes from, The Obstacle Is The Way . It definitely is a book every dreamer and achiever should have in their library.

Note: We’re reader supported, if you buy through one of the links above, we may earn an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you.

With that being said, we hope you enjoyed these encouraging quotes. Now get out there and start leveraging this wisdom to turn your toughest trials into your greatest triumphs.

PS – If you enjoyed these The Obstacle Is The Way Quotes, then you’ll like enjoy these Inspirational Quotes About Life and Struggles .

100+ EARL NIGHTINGALE QUOTES TO HELP YOU SUCCEED IN THE WORLD TODAY

Earl Nightingale was a highly influential personality who came to fame in the 20th century. He retired early by the age of 35, pioneered one of the first audio-recordings in the success and self-development industry, and eventually published one the most well thought-out and masterfully narrated success guides ever created. Having discovered the secret to success , and then generously sharing that secret with the rest of the world, his contribution to modern society is for all intents and purposes, unmatched. As such, we aim to ensure his legacy and sage advice continues to change peoples lives. Which is why, we’ve decided to publish this collection of the very best Earl Nightingale quotes from a variety of his best works.

“Earl Nightingale Has Inspired More People Toward Success And Fortune Than Any Other Motivational Speaker On The Planet.” – zig ziglar –

So, if you’re ready to learn from the wise words of one of the world’s most prominent scholars on the subject of success, and learn the very secret to success while you’re at it, then let’s dive into these quotes:

BEST EARL NIGHTINGALE QUOTES

1. “Every one of us is the sum total of his own thoughts.” – Earl Nightingale

2. “People are where they are because that is exactly where they really want to be whether they will admit that or not.” – Earl Nightingale

3. “Your world is a living expression of how you are using and have used your mind.” – Earl Nightingale

4. “Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become reality.” – Earl Nightingale

5. “When you judge others, you do not define them, you define yourself” – Earl Nightingale

6. “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” – Earl Nightingale

7. “ Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us.” – Earl Nightingale

8. “It is not what happens to you in life that makes the difference. It is how you react to each circumstance you encounter that determines the result.” – Earl Nightingale

9. “Wherever there is danger, there lurks opportunity; wherever there is opportunity, there lurks danger. The two are inseparable.” – Earl Nightingale

10. “The strangest secret in the world is that you become what you think about.” – Earl Nightingale

Earl Nightingale Quotes on Success

This next batch of quotes is some of Earl’s wisest words on the topic of finding and achieving success. No doubt, all of his advice can be attributed to success, but this next handful of quotes are the most poignant.

With that said, if you’re here in search of success insights then these Earl Nightingale quotes on success will do the trick. Enjoy.

11. “People with goals succeed because they know where they are going.” – Earl Nightingale

12. “Whatever the majority of people are doing, under any given circumstance, if you’ll do the exact opposite, you will probably never make another mistake as long as you live.” – Earl Nightingale

13. “We are all self-made, but only the successful will admit it.” – Earl Nightingale

14. “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.” – Earl Nightingale

15. “Success is not the result of making money; making money is the result of success… and success is in direct proportion to our service.” – Earl Nightingale

16. “A success is anyone who is doing deliberately a worthy predetermined job, because that’s what he decided to do deliberately.” – Earl Nightingale

17. “There is no success without suffering. I think that the word ‘suffering’ was meant to mean tremendous effort and direction.” – Earl Nightingale

18. “Successful people form the habit of doing what failures don’t like to do. They like the results they get by doing what they don’t necessarily enjoy.” – Earl Nightingale

19. “Men credited with all kinds of ability, talent, brains and know how, including the ability to see into the future, frequently have nothing more than the courage to keep everlastingly at what they set out to do. They have that one great quality that is worth more than all the rest put together. They simply will not give up! When a man makes up his mind to do something then it’s only a matter of time. Staying with time takes bulldog persistence. This seems to be the entrance examination to success – lasting success — of any kind!” – Earl Nightingale

20. “We tend to live up to our expectations.” – Earl Nightingale

21. “Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render.” – Earl Nightingale

22. “ Successful people are not without problems. They’re simply people who’ve learned to solve their problems.” – Earl Nightingale

23. “Most people tiptoe through life, hoping to make it safely to death.” – Earl Nightingale

24. “A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that’s what she wants to do.” – Earl Nightingale

25. “The only person who succeeds is the person who is progressively realizing a worthy ideal.” – Earl Nightingale

26. “All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.” – Earl Nightingale

27. “Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.” – Earl Nightingale

28. “A person who does not read is no better than one cannot read.” – Earl Nightingale

29. “Any person who contributes to prosperity must prosper in turn.” – Earl Nightingale

30. “A great attitude is not the result of success; Success is the result of a great attitude.” – Earl Nightingale

31. “If the grass is greener on the other side it’s probably getting better care.” – Earl Nightingale

32. “Each of us creates his or her own life largely by our attitude.” – Earl Nightingale

33. “One extra hour of study per day and you’ll be a national expert in five years or less.” – Earl Nightingale

34. “If you don’t have a good model for success, just look at what everybody else is doing and do the opposite.” – Earl Nightingale

35. “Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations.” – Earl Nightingale

36. “Plant your goal in your mind. It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your entire life.” – Earl Nightingale

37. “The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.” – Earl Nightingale

38. “We must radiate success before it will come to us. We must first become mentally, from an attitude standpoint, the people we wish to become.” – Earl Nightingale

39. “Just one great idea can completely revolutionize your work and, as a result, your life.”

40. “You must radiate success before it will come to you.” – Earl Nightingale

Inspiring Earl Nightingale Quotes

If you’ve never read or listened to any of Earl Nightingales books or audio books, we highly recommend the investment. Quotes are a great starting place to get you accustomed to his line of thinking, but you’ll get the most out of his teachings by studying his material thoroughly.

With that said, here are some of the most inspiring Earl Nightingale quotes we collected during our study. Enjoy.

41. “A person’s discontent can be said to be measured by the distance between what he has and what he wants.” – Earl Nightingale

42. “We will receive not what we idly wish for, but what we justly earn. Our rewards will always be in exact proportion to our service.” – Earl Nightingale

43. “You are now and you do become, what you think about.” – Earl Nightingale

44. “Perseverance is another word for faith!” – Earl Nightingale

45. “Act the part of the successful person whom you’ve decided to become.” – Earl Nightingale

46. “We all walk in the dark and each of us must learn to turn on his or her own light.” – Earl Nightingale

47. “A bad attitude is like a flat tire. You can’t go anywhere till you change it.” – Earl Nightingale

48. “The key that unlocks energy is ”Desire’.’ It’s also the key to a long and interesting life. If we expect to create any drive, any real force within ourselves, we have to get excited.” – Earl Nightingale

49. “Creativity is an expression of our enthusiasm.” – Earl Nightingale

50. “Everything begins with an idea.” – Earl Nightingale

51 . “Work never killed anyone. It’s worry that does the damage. And the worry would disappear if we’d just settle down and do the work.” – Earl Nightingale

52. “Problems are challenges to creative minds. Without problems, there would be little reason to think at all.” – Earl Nightingale

53. “The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else.” – Earl Nightingale

54. “Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now.” – Earl Nightingale

55. “Your problem is to bridge the gap which exists between where you are now and the goal you intend to reach .” – Earl Nightingale

56. “You’ll find boredom where there is the absence of a good idea.” – Earl Nightingale

57. “There is a time when one must decide either to risk everything to fulfill one’s dreams or sit for the rest of one’s life in the backyard.” – Earl Nightingale

58. “Don’t concern yourself with the money. Be of service … build … work … dream … create! Do this and you’ll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.” – Earl Nightingale

59. “Do each day all that can be done that day. You don’t need to overwork or to rush blindly into your work trying to do the greatest possible number of things in the shortest possible time.” – Earl Nightingale

60. “What’s going on in the inside shows on the outside.” – Earl Nightingale

Earl Nightingale Quotes from The Greatest Discovery

Earl Nightingale’s first published book was ‘The Greatest Discovery’ which won him the Napoleon Hill Gold Medal for Literary Excellence. [1] As such, this next batch consists of some of the best Earl Nightingale quotes from his book ‘The Greatest Discovery’. We hope you enjoy this rare collection of inspiring quotes.

If you want to learn more about Earl Nightingale before you dive into this next batch of quotes, this is a terrific place to start here: Who His Earl Nightingale?

61. “The best is never the most popular.” – Earl Nightingale

62. “Using our intuition along with our intelligence as a guide, can be the best way to produce super ideas.” – Earl Nightingale

63. “Planting a problem or question deep in the subconscious by first turning it every which way during an in-depth conscious attempt to solve it, usually results in the answer eventually appearing completely unbidden in our consciousness.” – Earl Nightingale

64. “When can think better, more profitably, and serve more people through ideas than we can ever do physically.” – Earl Nightingale

65. “The ideas we hold should be in concert with our goals, if our goals are to be successfully achieved.” – Earl Nightingale

66. “An idea is the bringing together of known increments to provide a new result.” – Earl Nightingale

67. “Service, we are here to serve each other. And every one of us does who receives anything back in the way of return. Those who do not serve, do not receive anything.” – Earl Nightingale

68. “The greatest thing in the world is the opportunity to be of service to others.” – Earl Nightingale

69. “Attitude comes very close to being everything about success or failure.” – Earl Nightingale

70. “There’s a place for every person who will persevere .” – Earl Nightingale

71. “My habit of muttering to myself, “Stay with it!” had paid off, just as it always does.” – Earl Nightingale

72. “It’s staying with it that separates the winners from the losers.” – Earl Nightingale

73. “A person can have a great education, but if he also has a poor attitude, he will almost certainly fail.” – Earl Nightingale

74. “We are what we repeatedly do, but what we do is a matter of choice.” – Earl Nightingale

75. “We become successful to the extent of our true desires and determination, and we do so by building on our strong points; our forte.” – Earl Nightingale

The Strangest Secret Quotes by Earl Nightingale

Earl Nightingale’s claim to fame and lasting legacy was his creation of the audiobook ‘The Strangest Secret’. We’ve provided a few quotes from this masterpiece in earlier sections; however, this batch focuses on the very Strangest Secret quotes by Earl Nightingale.

76. “Books are filled with ideas, and ideas spur us into action.” – Earl Nightingale

77. “I can determine what I think about, therefore I can determine what I become and what I have.” – Earl Nightingale

78. “Our minds are the gyrocompasses of our lives, we can only go were they direct us, and we are in charge of our minds.” – Earl Nightingale

79. “You will do more good for the rest of the human race enthusiastically going full bore after the things you want, than in any other way, because the only way you can get the things you want is by providing service to others — and the more intense and enthusiastic you are about it, the better will be your service. It’s the way the free-market private enterprise American system works.” – Earl Nightingale

80. “The universal key to success simply put is this… as you think , so shall you become.” – Earl Nightingale

81. “You’ll do best at what you most want to do in the pursuit of your personal goals, in so doing, you’ll provide the maximum service to those you need to help you.” – Earl Nightingale

82. “Ideas are the most important things on earth, and each of us has his or her our own idea factory — it comes as standard equipment at birth.” – Earl Nightingale

83. “Don’t ever say, I’d like to get to the point where I can start taking things easy.” – Earl Nightingale

84. “Our rewards, all the years of our lives, will be in proportion to our service. We are here, we live, in order to serve one another.” – Earl Nightingale

85. “Without ideas, we’d still be sitting in the trees grooming one another.” – Earl Nightingale

86. “There are no guarantees. Don’t confuse opportunity with guarantee.” – Earl Nightingale

87. “It’s best you get rid of that terrible word “security” now, once and for all, there’s no such thing as security as long as you’re alive. Dead you’re secure. Unborn you’re secure. If you’re alive, you’re the very epitome of insecurity.” – Earl Nightingale

88. “People will make you rich, or keep you broke, depending on the way you serve them. You should make up your mind at the outset if you are planning to become a successful entrepreneur , that you are going to make people outside the organization and inside the organization your special concern.” – Earl Nightingale

89. “You can’t lose money on a customer if you treat him or her the way they should be treated.” – Earl Nightingale

90. “Luck is when preparedness meets opportunity.” – Earl Nightingale

91. “The successful person does things. The unsuccessful person has done things done to him or her.” – Earl Nightingale

92. “Life should be an exciting adventure. It should never be a bore. A man should live fully , be alive. He should be glad to get out of bed in the morning. He should be doing a job that he likes to do because he does it well.” – Earl Nightingale

93. “Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render.” – Earl Nightingale

94. “There is no fragment of this freedom of ours, that can’t be turned into the success we seek.” – Earl Nightingale

95. “There are no jobs so humble, that they do not have lurking within them the opportunity for greatness and all the success we could possibly want, but it takes that expectant attitude to see it.” – Earl Nightingale

96. “More than any other factor perhaps, the unsuccessful person can usually be identified with a group.” – Earl Nightingale

97. “The person who succeeds in America is the person who sets his or her own wages, goals, and lifestyle.” – Earl Nightingale

98. “The American people can become whatever it is they want to become – the trouble is, they seldom make that decision.” – Earl Nightingale

99. “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice… it is conformity.”

100. “The unsuccessful person sowing little , reaps little.” – Earl Nightingale

101. “The law is, that our financial return will be in direct proportion to our service.” – Earl Nightingale

102. “If you believe you can enrich yourself by deluding others, you can end only by deluding yourself.” – Earl Nightingale

103. “ Money is the harvest of our production.” – Earl Nightingale

104. “No man can get rich himself unless he enriches others.” – Earl Nightingale

105. “The greatest journey is the journey of the mind.” – Earl Nightingale

Bonus Earl Nightingale Quote

Bonus: Here’s our last and final Earl Nightingale quote. It’s been said in one of the earlier quotes in a different way. But, it’s being rehashed here because we believe it’s one of his best, and it’s the one you’ll stand to gain the most from. So, if you take any quote from this page to run with, this is the one to take, Enjoy.

“We Become What We Think About Most Of The Time, And That’s The Strangest Secret.” – earl nightingale –

There you have it, the most comprehensive collection of Earl Nightingale quotes on the web. We hope the wisdom found in his words inspires you to learn more about this inspiring human.

But most importantly, we hope his quotes will eventually lead to your own serious study of his time-tested philosophy of success.

That said, if you enjoyed these quotes, please share them. Or, if you think there’s a Millennial or Gen Z’er out there who could benefit from the learning of Earl Nightingale’s timeless wisdom, please share these quotes with them as well. Because there’s no doubt, that his success philosophy is one of the best kept secrets of this generation.

Till you reach your aims,

PS – If you enjoyed these Earl Nightingale quotes, then there’s a good chance you’ll also stand to benefit from studying the wise words of these success-minded individuals as well:

Napoleon Hill | Zig Ziglar | Bob Proctor | Jim Rohn

75 INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES ABOUT RESPECT

Respect is a fundamental human need. We all crave respect and admiration from others, and we all have a deep need for self-respect as well. As Maya Angelou once put it, “I think it’s important to respect yourself because if you don’t then nobody else is going to respect you.”

Thus, both having and giving respect is essential to a happy and fulfilling life. It’s the foundation of a healthy self-esteem, a positive self-image, and our ability to give respect to others. Respect is an important part of life, and it’s critical to earn if one is striving for more success and influence in their lives.

So, if you’re looking for a little bit of inspiration and some of the best sayings and quotes about respect, you’ll find both here:

BEST QUOTES ABOUT RESPECT

1. “Respect is earned by action alone, not self-graticulation.” – Paul Combs

2. “Self-respect knows no considerations.” – Mahatma Gandhi

3. “You can’t force someone to respect you, but you can refuse to be disrespected.” – Barb Schmidt

4. “As we grow as unique persons, we learn to respect the uniqueness of others.” – Robert Schuller

5. “I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.” – Albert Einstein

6. “Do not tolerate disrespect, not even from yourself.” – Unknown

7. “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein

8. “You should never be surprised when someone treats you with respect, you should expect it.” – Sarah Dessen

9. “Self respect is the fruit of discipline ; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself. ” – Abraham Heschel 

10. “Self-respect is the cornerstone of all virtue.” – John Herschell

11. “Respect is a two-way street, if you want to get it, you’ve got to give it.” – R.G. Risch

12. “If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.” – John W. Gardner

13. “Blood, sweat and respect. First two you give, last one you earn.” – Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

14. “Never respect men merely for their riches, but rather for their philanthropy; we do not value the sun for its height, but for its use.” – Gamaliel Bailey

15. “When we show our respect for other living things, they respond with respect for us.” – Arapaho proverb

16. “Respect other people’s feelings. It might mean nothing to you, but it could mean everything to them.” – Roy T. Bennett

17. “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.” – Jackie Robinson

18. “One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.” – Bryant H. McGill

19. “How people treat you with their karma. How you react is yours.” – Wayne W. Dyer

20. “I cannot conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one’s self-respect.” – Mahatma Gandhi

21. “There is no respect for others without humility in one’s self.” – Henri Amiel

22. “Be you. The world will adjust.” – Barry Popik

23. “Love yourself enough to surround yourself with people who respect you.” –  Anonymous

24. “Life is short, and we should respect every moment of it.” – Orhan Pamuk

25. “A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered.” – Felix Adler

26. “When you practice gratefulness, there is a sense of respect toward others.” – Dalai Lama

27. “The right to be respected is won by respecting others.” – Vasyl Sukhomlynsky

28. “Always respect another’s opinion and another’s point of view.” – Sri Sathya Sai Baba

29. “Responsibility and respect for others and their religious beliefs are also part of freedom.” – Horst Koehler

30. “If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.” – Louis D. Brandeis

31. “One of the surprising things in this world is the respect a worthless man has for himself.” E. W. Howe

32. “Have a big enough heart to love unconditionally, and a broad enough mind to embrace the differences that make each of us unique.” – D.B. Harrop

33. “To fall in love with yourself is the first secret to happiness. ” – Robert Moley

34. “You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.” – Amy Bloom

35. “The fact that someone else loves you doesn’t rescue you from the project of loving yourself.” – Sahaj Kohli

36. “Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.” – Laurence Sterne

37. “Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you or makes you happy.” – Robert Tew

38. “Everyone’s a STAR and deserves the right to twinkle.” – Marilyn Monroe

39 “Respect is how to treat everyone.” – Richard Branson

40. “Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.” – Bruce Lee

41. “Respect is as important as love in a relationship!” – Anonymous

42. “Life is too short to waste your time on people who don’t respect, appreciate, and value you.” – Roy T. Bennett

43. “Respect yourself and others will respect you.” – Confucius

44.   “I am who I am. That’s why my friends and peers respect and appreciate me.” – Kevin Hart

45. “The idea of respect is more than just being polite.” – Bruce Glassman

46. “Little people are indifferent. Superior people are caring.” – Maxima Lagac’e

47. “I can be hurt only by people I respect.” – Mary Balogh

48. “I must respect the opinions of others even if I disagree with them.” – Herbert H. Lehman

49. “Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” – Leo Tolstoy

50. “Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one is idolized.” – Albert Einstein

51. “Respect is earned. Honesty is appreciated. Trust is gained. Loyalty is returned.” – Ed Mylett

52. “Show up early, treat people with respect and perform at the highest levels till the world can’t deny you.” – Grant Cardone

53. “Our lives are a work of art. Plant seeds of love and respect and reap a harvest of prosperity and peace.” – Joan Pillen

54. “We can’t expect to be respected if we can’t respect ourselves.” – Derrick Jackson

55. “Don’t worry what others think of you, be confident and straightforward with decency and others will respect you.” – Lori Greiner

56. “Respect is earned, not demanded.” – Stacy Halls

57. “The respect you give others is a dramatic reflection of the respect you give yourself.” – Robin Sharma

58. “The only authority I respect is the one that causes butterflies to fly south in the fall and north in the springtime.” – Tony Robbins

59. “In many ways, effective communication begins with mutual respect, communication that inspires, encourages others to be their best.” – Zig Ziglar

60. “My company survives because I’ve learned to respect the ideas of people younger than me and recognize when my wisdom is obsolete.” – Robert Kiyosaki

61. “To undermine a man’s self-respect is a sin.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

62. “Service to many leads to greatness, great respect, great satisfaction.” – Jim Rohn

63. “No matter how they’re treating you there is one way to not only their respect, but turn the tables. Excellence.” – David Goggins

64. “The more that you treat your troops with respect, the more they’re going to respect you.” – Jocko Willink

65. “The highest form of self love and self respect is being fit.” – Bedros Keuilian

66. “People don’t have to like you, they have to respect you.” – Kevin O’Leary

67. “The more you respect yourself, the less disrespect you’ll put up with from others.” – Mel Robbins

68. “When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.” – Mark Twain

69. “Reject rejection! If someone says no, just say NEXT.” – Jack Canfield

70. “Don’t ask for respect. Earn it.” – Robin Sharma

71. “People really do respect those who are willing to speak their truth.” – Wayne Dyer

72. “I don’t want to be liked, I want to be respected. Because if you like me you can throw me away too quick. If you respect me, you may not even like what I was wearing, but you’ll say, “I respect that.” – Ray Lewis

73. “We should respect all people.” – Helen Keller

74. “We do not covet anything from any nation expect for their respect.” – Winston Churchill

75. “You must find the courage to leave the table if respect is no longer being served.” – Mel Robbins

Related: Short Quotes On Life

Bonus Quote on Respect

Bonus: Here’s one last and final respect quote. We think it holds the key to a better life and a better world. Enjoy:

“Respect Is One Of The Greatest Expressions Of Love.” – miguel angel ruiz –

We hope you enjoyed these inspiring respect quotes. If any caught your eye please feel free to share it, and if you found inspiration in this page, please bookmark or share it with others.

PS – If you enjoyed these inspirational quotes about respect, then you’ll probably also enjoy these quotes about self-confidence or these truly inspiring believe in yourself quotes .

100 HARD HITTING QUOTES ABOUT LIFE, LOVE, AND SUCCESS

Life is too short, too precious to waste even a one single minute on meaningless words. Nobody has time for the unnecessary, and it’s for this very reason that we love hard hitting quotes. You know, the kind of quotes that don’t pull any punches. The type of quotes that tell you exactly what you need to hear when you need to hear it. The one’s that truly speak to your core.

In fact, we love quotes that hit hard so much, that we’ve pulled together this best of the best list from the vast collection of quotes that we’ve been publishing over the past 7 years. So, if you’re looking for some powerful hard hitting quotes, then you’ll enjoy this list.

BEST HARD HITTING QUOTES

1. “If you always do what you’ve done, you’ll always get what you’ve got.” – Henry Ford

2. “Change your thoughts and you can change your world.” – Norman Vincent Peale

3. “Many times life will hit you hard, knock you down, and hurt you. Persevere, Never Give Up, and do your best to get up and Keep Going.” – John Cena

4. “We can’t become what we need to be by remaining what we are.” – Oprah Winfrey

5. “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” – Abraham Lincoln

6. “Life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the stats of air.” – Sarah Kay

7. “Normality is a paved road: it’s comfortable to walk but no flowers grow.” – Vincent Van Gogh

8. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”  –  Helen Keller

9. “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” – William James

10. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” – Frederick Douglass

11. “Not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do is the secret of happiness.” – J.M. Barrie

12. “Don’t wast your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy.” – Roy T. Bennett

13. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams .” – Eleanor Roosevelt

14. “There are only two great tragedies in life: one is not getting what you want and the other is getting it.” – Oscar Wilde

15. “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.” – Rocky Balboa

16. “Don’t think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.” Voltaire

17. “A discipline mind leads to happiness, and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering.” – Dalai Lama

18.  “The two most important days of your life are the day that you’re born and the day that you find out why.” – Mark Twain

19. “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

20.  “When you cease to dream you cease to live.” – Malcom Forbes

21. “Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and the goal of good intention was never reached through its opposite, laziness.” – Miguel de Cervantes

22. “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” – James Dean

23. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho

24. “Inside of a ring or out, ain’t nothing wrong with going down. It’s staying down that’s wrong.” – Muhammad Ali

25. “No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you are still ahead of everyone else who isn’t trying.” – Tony Robbins

Hard Hitting Quotes on Love

26. “Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.” – Oscar Wilde

27. “Love is like the wind, you can’t see it but you can feel it.” – Nicholas Sparks

28. “Love is not what you say, love is what you do.” – Anonymous

29. “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.” – Lao Tzu

30. “You can’t go back and change the beginning. But you can start where you are and change the ending.” – C.S. Lewis

31. “Love has nothing to do what what you are expecting to get — only with what you are expecting to give — which is everything.” – Katherine Hepburn

32. “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” – Elbert Hubbard

33. “Relationships end too soon because people stop putting in the same effort to keep you, as they did to win you.” – Anonymous

34. “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.” – Brene Brown

35. “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” – Aristotle

36. “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.” – Maya Angelou

37 . “The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just have to find the ones worth suffering for.” – Bob Marley

38. “You’ve got to be in a bad relationship to really understand what a great one is.” – Steve Harvey

39. “The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard — they must be felt with the heart.” – Helen Keller

40. “Do what you did in the beginning of a relationship and there won’t be an end.” – Tony Robbins

41. “True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.” – Francois de La Rochefoucauld

42. “The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved.” – Victor Hugo

43. “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” – Charles Dickens

44. “What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.” – Timothy Ferriss

45. “True love stories never have endings.” – Richard Bach

46.  “If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.” – Mother Teresa

47 . “The love we give away is the only love we keep.” – Elbert Hubbard

48. “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi

49. “When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.” – Blaise Pascal

50. “When love is real, it finds a way.” – Avatar Roku

Hard Hitting Quotes on Success

51. “Be obsessed or be average.”  –  Grant Cardone

52. “There is no substitute for hard work.” – Thomas Edison

53. “Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you who you’ll turn out to be.” – Warren Buffett

54. “Failure shows us the way — by showing us what isn’t the way.” – Ryan Holiday

55. “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.” – Eric Thomas

56. “Become a millionaire not for the million dollars, but for what it will make of you to achieve it.” – Jim Rohn

57. “One has to remember that every failure can be a stepping stone to something better.” – Colonel Sanders

58. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau

59. “Winners embrace hard work.  They love the discipline of it, the trade-off they’re making to win.  Losers, on the other hand, see it as a punishment.  And that’s the difference.” –  Lou Holtz

60. “If you avoid failure, you also avoid success.” – Robert Kiyosaki

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

62. “Where success is concerned, people are not measured in inches, or pounds, or college degrees, or family background: they are measured by the size of their thinking.”  –  David J. Schwartz

63. “Average people have wishes and hopes. Successful people have goals .”  –  Anonymous

64 . “God doesn’t require that you succeed, he only requires that you try.” – Mother Teresa

65. “Tell me how you use your spare time, and how you spend your money, and I will tell you where and what you will be in ten years from now.” – Napoleon Hill

66. “Success is when reality catches up to your imagination.” – Simon Sinek

67. “Don’t mistake activity with achievement .” – John Wooden

68. “It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop.” – Confucius

69. “Obsessed is a word often used by the lazy to describe the dedicated.” – Tai Lopez

70. “The key to success is failure.” – Michael Jordan

71 “Faith will get you to a point. Luck will get you to a point. But to achieve the kind of success you dream about, you need to work. There are no shortcuts, you can’t cheat life, just get to work and don’t stop until you reach your highest potential .” – Denzel Washington

72. “Ambition is the first step to success. The second step is action.” – Mel Robbins

73. “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill

74. “Show me a person who has never made a mistake and I’ll show you someone who has never achieved much.” – Joan Collins

75. “We are all self-made, but only the successful will admit it.”  –  Earl Nightingale

76. “Life is hard, money doesn’t care, your tears don’t add value.” – Kevin O’Leary

77. “Nobody ever changed the world by doing what everyone else was doing.” – Mark Cuban

78. “Being broke is temporary but poverty of the mind is permanent.” – Daymond John

79. “The difference between successful people and others is how long they feel sorry for themselves.” – Barbara Corcoran

80. “It is not the strong or the weak that will survive — it is the resilient.” – Robert Herjavec

81. “The greatest accomplishment in life isn’t what you’re paid, it’s who you become.” – Lori Greiner

82. “You are never powerful in life until you are powerful over your money.” – Suze Orman

83. “You always get what you tolerate. If you tolerate  mediocrity , then that’s what you’ll get.” – Bedros Keuilian

84. “Poverty is not something that is lacking out there, poverty is always something that is lacking inside.” – Myron Golden

85. “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” – Calvin Coolidge

86. “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” – Zig Ziglar

87. “Your ambition is predicated on your action, not your words.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

88. “No one is going to come help you. No one’s coming to save you.” – David Goggins

89. “Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity.” – Will Smith

90. “Every noble work is at first impossible.” – Thomas Carlyle

91. “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.”   –   Steve Jobs

92. “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”  –  Vince Lombardi

93. “You are not given a dream, unless you have the capacity to fulfill it.” – Jack Canfield

94.  “Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the rally great make you believe that you too can be great.” – Mark Twain

95. “It’s not about money or connections — It’s the willingness to outwork and outlearn everyone when it comes to your business. And if it fails, you learn from what happened and do a better job next time.” – Mark Cuban

96. “He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much.” –  James Allen

97. “Poor people stop learning as soon as they get out of school. Rich people continue their education long after they graduate.” – Myron Golden

98. “The world rewards results. Period.” – Andy Frisella

99. “Average is the enemy.” – Bedros Keuilian

100. “ Money  has no gray areas, you either make it or you lose it.” – Kevin O’Leary

Bonus Quote The Hits Hard

Bonus: Alright, here is one of our favorite hard hitting quotes. We added it as bonus, because we stand behind it, and believe it to be 100% true whether it be in life, love, or success. Enjoy.

“Our Greatest Glory Is Not In Never Falling, But In Rising Every Time We Fall.” – confucius –

FINAL THOUGHTS

Big kudos making to the end of these quotes that hit hard. We hope you agree with us, that they are indeed hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and helpful.

That said, come back again whenever you need a little bit of inspiration or motivation, we’ll be sure to have something new to help you reach your aims,

PS – If you enjoyed these hard-hitting quotes, then you’ll probably enjoy these inspiring quotes about strength .

50 POWERFUL ALPHA FEMALE QUOTES FOR THE STRONG WOMAN

Being an Alpha Female is a title that some women are not too eager to embrace. To some, the Alpha Female connotes a woman who is overly domineering, pushy, cut-throat, and unpleasant to work with. But, we believe that idea of the Alpha Female is not accurate. In fact, we see the Alpha Female as a woman who is motivated, embraces her talents, is poised, self-assured, and not only willing to become the woman she most wants to be in her heart, but determined to become the best woman she can be.

“She Was Unstoppable and She Took Anything She Wanted With a Smile.”

So, in honor of all the self-ascribed or aspiring Alpha Females out there, we decided to publish this inspiring collection of Alpha Female quotes. We hope they’ll inspire you to believe in yourself and your ability to create and lead your best life.

BEST ALPHA FEMALE QUOTES

1. “An empress does not concern herself with the antics of fools.” – Gabrielle Union

2. “I am learning every day to allow the space between where I am and where I want to be to inspire me and not terrify me.” – Tracee Ellis Ross

3. “Strong women don’t play the victim. Don’t make themselves look pitiful and don’t point fingers. They stand and they deal.” –  Mandy Hale

4. “I’m not going to limit myself just because people won’t accept the fact that I can do something else.” – Dolly Parton

5. “I am a strong woman. I don’t sit around feeling sorry for myself, nor let people mistreat me. I don’t respond to people who dictate to me or try to bring me down. If I fall, I will rise up even stronger because I am a survivor not a victim. I am in control of my life and there is nothing I can’t achieve.” – Anonymous

6. “An Alpha Female accepts the battles of life and is empowered by her scars.” – Anonymous

7. “If you can dance and be free and not be embarrassed, you can rule the world.” – Amy Poehler

8. “Don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions; go over, under, through, and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.” – Tina Fey

9. “She would rather walk alone in darkness than follow anyone else’s shadow.” – R.G. Moon

10. “Sometimes you gotta be a beauty and a beast.” – Nicki Minaj

11. “She is a queen. Her soul is royalty.” – Adrian Michael

12. “Truly powerful women don’t explain why they want or deserve respect. They simply don’t engage with those who don’t give it to them.” – Anonymous

13. “An Alpha Female loves, forgives, walks away, lets go, tries again, and preservers not matter what life throws at her.” – Alpha Female Quote

14. “There are some people who still feel threatened by strong women. That’s their problem. It’s not mine.” – Gloria Allred

15. “Be and alpha female. Confident , bold. Not afraid of anything.” – Shilpa Negi 

16. “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” – Anonymous

17. “She is the one who is happy to admit that her failures are as valuable for learning as her successes.” – Lorraine Candy

18. “No matter where you are in life, you’ll save a lot of time by not worrying too much about what other people think about you. The earlier in your life that you can learn that, the easier the rest of it will be.” – Sophia Amoruso

19. “Worry about being respected, never worry about being liked. Because that’s the trap.” – Jada Pinkett Smith

20. “You must do the things you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

21. Never ever mistake her silence for weakness. Remember that sometimes the air stills, before the onset of a hurricane.” – Nikita Gill

22. “An Alpha Female is a strong woman who raises others up instead of tearing them down.” – Anonymous

23. “Alpha females don’t run in packs. She is often alone. Keeps her circle small. Knows her power and works in silence.” – Anonymous

24. “The term ‘alpha female’ originated in my field of animal behavior, but has acquired new meaning. It refers to women who are in charge, for example, by flirting and dating on their own terms.” – Frans de Waal

25. “Alpha Females don’t run in packs.” – Anonymous

26. “The thing about an alpha, male or female, is that they can lead. When things get desperate they attack instead of retreat.” – Kristen Chandler

27. “You could certainly say that I’ve never underestimated myself, there’s nothing wrong with being ambitious.” – Angela Merkel

28. “Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.” – Mary Kay Ash

29. “Mindset separates the best from the rest.” – Jo Owen

30. “There is no greater warrior than a mother protecting her child.” – N.K. Jemisin

31. “We need women who are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational, and so disciplined they can be free.” – Kavita Ramdas

32. “I know my worth. I embrace my power. I say if I’m beautiful. I say if I’m strong. You will not determine my story. I will.” – Amy Schumer

33. “The strongest actions for a woman are to love herself, be herself, and shine amongst those who never believed she could.” – Anonymous

34. “I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself.” Simone de Beauvoir

35. “I don’t go by the rule book. I lead from the heart, not the head.” – Princess Diana

36. “She remembered who she was and the game changed.” – Lalah Deliah

37. “You control your own life. Your own will is extremely powerful.” – J.K. Rowling

38. “You can have it all. Just not all at once.” – Oprah Winfrey

39. “Throw out the words ‘If I can’, ‘I hope’, and ‘maybe’, and replace them with ‘I can, I will, I must.” – Mary Kay Ash

40. “I never dreamed of success, I worked for it.” – Estee Lauder

41. “I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse .” – Florence Nightingale

42. “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars.” – Harriet Tubman

43. “First principle: never to let one’s self be beaten down by persons or by events.” – Marie Curie

44. “Some people say I have attitude–maybe I do…But I think you have to. You have to believe in yourself when no one else does – that makes you a winner right there.” – Venus Williams

45. “It’s tougher to be vulnerable than to actually be tough.” – Rihanna

46. “The secret to using power is not to use it. Just having it is enough.” – Jessica Alba

47. “I don’t care what you think of me. I don’t think of you at all.” – Coco Chanel

48. “If you put that effort in , you’ll get what you want.” – Kim Kardashian

49. “Nothing is going to be handed to you — you have to make things happen.” – Florence Griffith Joyner

50. “It’s not about perfection. It’s about purpose.” – Beyonc’e

The Alpha Female knows the unique power she wields, and courageously strives to reach her potential while achieving her highest purpose.

That said, we hope you enjoyed these powerful Alpha Femail quotes, and embrace them so you can unleash the Alpha Female in you.

Till you reach those aims,

PS – If you enjoyed these Alpha Female quotes, then you may also enjoy these inspiring quotes on ambition , or these highly motivating quotes about success and achievement .

75+ POWERFUL QUOTES ABOUT EMBRACING CHANGE

There is only one constant in life, and that is change . We can resist it, or we can embrace it. Resisting typically brings pain, prolongs suffering, and is often done so in vain. However, embracing change sets the stage for renewal, growth, and a more promising future. Which is why we’ve rounded up these embrace change quotes.

“ Life Does Not Get Better By Chance, It Gets Better By Change. “

Our hope is that these powerful quotes will inspire you to let go and grow, to change. But more importantly, we hope these embrace change quotes inspire you to lean into whatever change you may be resisting at the moment. Certainly, changing for the sake of change is of no benefit to anyone, but there a few areas in everyone’s life where change may just be what we need.

So, if you’re ready to dive into some empowering quotes that can help you embrace the changes you may be resisting in your life, let’s dive right in:

INSPIRATIONAL EMBRACE CHANGE QUOTES

1. “Embrace change. True success can be defined by your ability to adapt to changing circumstances.” – Connie Sky

2. “The art of life lies in constant readjustment to our surroundings.” – Kakuzo Okaura

3. “Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.” – Eckhart Tolle

4. “Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” – Jim Rohn

5. “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” – Maya Angelou

6. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates

7. “Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win.” – Max McKeown

8. “Life is series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward, in whatever way they like.” – Lao Tzu

9. “Nothing on this earth is standing still.  It is either growing or it is dying .  No matter if it’s a tree or a human being.” – Lou Holtz

10. “Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.” – Dalai Lama

11. “You can either react to change, embrace change or create change.” – Bobby Umar

12. “Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.” – Anonymous

13. “When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into it’s dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment” – Pema Chödrön

14. “Life happens. Adapt. Embrace change, and make the most of everything that comes your way.” – Nick Jonas

15. “Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.” – Elon Musk

16.   “The most harmful dragon we chase is the one that makes us think we can change things that are simply not ours to change.” – Ryan Holiday

17. “Reinvention occurs everyday. It’s not something you wake up every five years and say, ‘OK today is Reinvention Day.’” – James Altucher

18. “Change is inevitable, progress is optional.” – Tony Robbins

19. “Each of us has the opportunity to change and grow until our very last breath.” – M.F. Ryan

20. “The only constant in life is change.” – Heraclitus

21. “The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” – Alan Watts

22. “Things change. Stuff happens. Life goes on.” – Elizabeth Scott

23.  “Life is about change. Sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes it’s beautiful. But most of the time, it’s both.” – Lana Lang

24. “The only way to get to the point of change is to understand the mistakes that are made before the change.” – Kevin Hart

25. “We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are.” – Max Depree

26. “Nothing Endures but Change.” – Heraclitus

27. “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” – C.S. Lewis

28. “The instant you accept responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you acquire the power to change it.” – Ed Mylett

29. “Change is inevitable in life. You can either resist it and potentially get run over by it, or you can choose to cooperate with it, adapt to it, and learn how to benefit from it.” – Jack Canfield

30. “Change before you have to.” – Jack Welch

31. “Persistence is the mother of personal change.” – Robin Sharma

32. “If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we are not really living.” – Gail Sheeby

33. “There is opportunity in change.  With change, comes the opportunity to live differently, become who we wish to be, and to live life on our own terms.” – Atlas Rowe

34.  “Pain doesn’t tell you when you ought to stop. Pain is the little voice in your head that tries to hold you back because it knows if you continue you will change.” – Kobe Bryant

35. “Those who cannot change their mind, cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw

36. “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” – John F. Kennedy

37 . “Change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and gorgeous in the end.” – Robin Sharma

38. “Change can be tough, but I’ve never heard anybody say it wasn’t worth it.” – Carol Dweck

39. “It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new.” – Alan Cohen

40. “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.” – John Wooden

41. “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” – Benjamin Franklin

43. “When you embrace change you will begin to see it as an opportunity for growth.” – Jack Canfield

42. “If I asked you, do you need to change? And you said to me, ‘No’, I’d be worried, you know? Like you think you’ve everything figured out emotionally, professionally, all of your relationships, everything’s golden. Oh, OK. How’s that working out for you?” – Simon Sinek

44. “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” – Henri Bergson

45. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” – Henry Ford

46.  “Don’t fear change, embrace it.” – Anthony J. D’Angelo

47 . “All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.” – Bruce Lee

48. “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” – Winston Churchill

49. “The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.” – John Maxwell

50. “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” – Albert Einstein

51. “Success in life hinges more on seizing opportunity than having everything go according to plan.” – Ethan Austin

52. “Nothing is forever except change.” – Buddha

53. “Maturity is when you stop complaining and making excuses, and start making changes.” – Roy T. Bennett

54. “Resistance is never the agent of change. You have to embrace the actions that are going to get you closer to your goal.” – Ali Vincent

55. “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” – Mel Robbins

56. “I think growth of the brain is a slow process. But you do change and the more you accept change and embrace change, the better.” – Diane Keaton

57. “Rather than wishing for change, you first must be prepared to change.” – Catherine Pulsifier

58. “The best time for new beginnings is now.” – Embrace Change Quote

59. “Go for it now. The future is promised to no one.” – Wayne Dyer

60. “You don’t have to hold yourself hostage to who you used to be.” – Oprah Winfrey

61. “One reason people resist change is because they focus on what they have to give up, instead of what they have to gain.” – Rick Godwin

62. “Embrace uncertainty. Some of the most beautiful chapters in our lives won’t have a title until much later.” – Bob Goff

63. “Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.” – Confucius

64. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller

65. “Change is not something you can avoid or pretend is not there. We all need to embrace it and face it head-on.” – Jay Shetty

66. “Embracing change means accepting that you can’t keep everything under control. As frightening as this thought is, it’s also very liberating. In fact, embracing change is key to your growth as an individual and highly affects your overall success and happiness.” – Intelligent Change

67. “Embrace change, even when the change slaps you in the face.” – Walter Breuning

68. “Achieving the life of your dreams and experiencing continuous personal evolution means commitment to the long game. You become the person you want to be not by enormous lifestyle changes, but slow, manageable tweaks over time.” – Bernhard Schroeder

69. “You cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.” – C.S. Lewis

70. “If you resist change, you resist life.” – Sadhguru

71. “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive, but those who can best manage change.” – Charles Darwin

72. “All changes are preceded by chaos.” – Deepak Chopra

73. “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin

74. “When in doubt, choose change.” – Lily Leung

75. “Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and start getting excited about what could go right.” – Tony Robbins

76. “You do not just wake up and become the butterfly. Growth is a process.” – Rupi Kaur

77. “Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.” – Oprah Winfrey

78. “A wise man changes his mind, a fool never will.” – Icelandic Proverb

79. “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.” – William James

80. “True life is lived when changes occur.” – Leo Tolstoy

81. “In order to change ourselves, we must first believe we can.” – Marie Forleo

82. “The people who are afraid to go through the challenges are the one who stay stuck in their lives.” – Dean Graziosi

83. “What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.” – Tim Ferriss

84. “You have a chance every single morning to make that change and be the person you want to be.” – Brendon Burchard

85. “To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate, is strength undefeatable.” – Helen Keller

Bonus Embrace Change Quote

Bonus: Alright, here is one of our favorite quotes about embracing change. We added it as bonus to our embrace change quotes collection because we stand behind it, and believe it to be 100% true.

“Becoming Is Better Than Being.” – CAROL DWECK –

Great job making it to the end of these embrace change quotes! We know scouring through a long list of quotes like this is no small feat, so big kudos to you.

That said, we hope these quotes have inspired you to want to lean into any change you may have been resisting up until this point. Remember, your better future is on the other side of change, so embrace it!

Until you reach that future…

PS – If you enjoyed these inspiring embrace change quotes, then you may also like these quotes about progress and growth , or even these powerful quotes about moving on .

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125 Motivational Success Quotes for Business in 2024

You found our list of motivational success quotes for work.

Success quotes are inspirational sayings that motivate people to work hard and achieve goals. For example “Success is never accidental.” – Jack Dorsey and “Failure is success in progress.” – Albert Einstein. The purpose of these phrases is to provide motivation and inspiration, help listeners withstand hardship and strive for greatness.

These sayings are a subset of inspirational quotes for work and hard work quotes . You can use these phrases to boost staff morale , motivate teams and choose motivational work songs .

This list includes:

• inspirational success quotes
• short success quotes
• business success quotes
• team success quotes
• success and failure quotes
• success and hard work quotes
• the key to success quotes
• quotes on achievement

Here we go!

Inspirational success quotes

• “All our dreams can come true; if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney
• “However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.” – Stephen Hawking
• “People begin to become successful the minute they decide to be.” – Harvey MacKay
• “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela
• “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” – Audrey Hepburn
• “Success isn’t overnight. It’s when everyday you get a little better than the day before. It all adds up.” – Dwayne Johnson
• “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius
• “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” – Oprah Winfrey
• “Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.” – Teddy Roosevelt
• “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
• “Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.” – Amelia Earhart
• “Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.” – Malcolm S. Forbes
• “Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.” – Mahatma Gandhi
• “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas A. Edison
• “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
• “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” – Herman Melville
• “A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.” – Charles Schwab
• “In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.” – Montesquieu
• “There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there — you must go beyond them.” – Bruce Lee

Short success quotes

• “Fortune befriends the bold.” – Emily Dickinson
• “Success is survival.” – Leonard Cohen
• “There is little success where there is little laughter.” – Andrew Carnegie
• “There is no substitute for victory.” – Douglas MacArthur
• “They succeed, because they think they can.” – Virgil
• “It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.” – Eddie Cantor
• “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” – John F. Kennedy
• “If you have no critics you’ll likely have no success.” – Malcolm X
• “Success is never accidental.” – Jack Dorsey
• “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.” – Suzy Kassem
• “The best revenge is massive success.” – Frank Sinatra
• “Men are born to succeed, not to fail.” – Henry David Thoreau
• “Success is the child of audacity.” – Benjamin Disraeli
• “Impatience never commanded success.” – Edwin H. Chapin
• “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – Milton Berle
• “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” – Bill Gates
• “Failure is success in progress.” – Albert Einstein

Business success quotes

• “If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.” – John D. Rockefeller
• “Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.” – Warren Bennis
• “You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.” – Oprah Winfrey
• “The secret of success in every field is redefining what success means to you. It can’t be your parent’s definition, the media’s definition, or your neighbor’s definition. Otherwise, success will never satisfy you.” – RuPaul
• “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” – Albert Einstein
• “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” – Elon Musk
• “Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.” – Confucius
• “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.” – Abraham Lincoln
• “​​Success isn’t about the end result, it’s about what you learn along the way.” – Vera Wang
• “Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.” – Julia Child
• “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
• “Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.” – Michelle Obama
• “I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it.” – Jonathan Winters
• “Talent alone won’t make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready.” – Johnny Carson

Team success quotes

• “Success is best when it’s shared.” – Howard Schultz
• “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford
• “Success is finding satisfaction in giving a little more than you take.” – Christopher Reeve
• “Success comes when people act together; failure tends to happen alone.” – Deepak Chopra
• “The level of our success is limited only by our imagination and no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.” – Aesop
• “If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.” – Maya Angelou
• “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” – Steve Jobs
• “Individual honors come with team success.” – Gilbert Arenas
• “The secret of the team’s success is easy – unity and hard work.” – David Beckham
• “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success.” – Babe Ruth
• “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.” – Vince Lombardi
• “There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.” – George Shinn
• “It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” – Napoleon Hill

Check out more quotes about teamwork .

Success and failure quotes

• “Success is not a good teacher, failure makes you humble.” – Shah Rukh Khan
• “Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.” – Ross Perot
• “Failure is success if we learn from it.” – Malcolm Forbes
• “A minute’s success pays the failure of years.” – Robert Browning
• “Success is falling nine times and getting up ten.” – Jon Bon Jovi
• “Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.” – George S. Patton
• “Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel
• “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” – Truman Capote
• “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan
• “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas A. Edison
• “Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.” – George Bernard Shaw
• “Sometimes a noble failure serves the world as faithfully as a distinguished success.” – Edward Dowden
• “Treat failure as a lesson on how not to approach achieving a goal, and then use that learning to improve your chances of success when you try again. Failure is only the end if you decide to stop.” – Richard Branson
• “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
• “Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.” – C. S. Lewis
• “Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.” – Henry Ford
• “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Success and hard work quotes

• “Much effort, much prosperity.” – Euripides
• “There is no success without hardship.” – Sophocles
• “In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.” – Miguel de Cervantes
• “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.” – Booker T. Washington
• “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” – William Feather
• “Success is the sum of small efforts – repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier
• “Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” – Dwayne Johnson
• “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” – Colin Powell
• “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vince Lombardi
• “Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• “My powers are ordinary. Only my application brings me success.” – Isaac Newton
• “To follow, without halt, one aim: that’s the secret of success.” – Anna Pavlova
• “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” – Estée Lauder
• “Work hard in silence, let your success be your noise.” – Frank Ocean

The key to success quotes

• “Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.” – J. Paul Getty
• “Action is the foundational key to all success.” – Pablo Picasso
• “True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful.” – Paul Sweeney
• “The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.” – Zig Ziglar
• “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
• “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.” – Mark Twain
• “I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.” – Florence Nightingale
• “Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.” – Scott Adams
• “Success has a simple formula: do your best, and people may like it.” – Sam Ewing
• “A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success.” – Joyce Brothers
• “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” – Alexander Graham Bell
• “There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen.” – Jim Lovell
• “The secret of my success is a two word answer: Know people.” – Harvey S. Firestone
• “For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.” – Walter Scott
• “The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.” – John C. Maxwell
• “The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.” – Ayn Rand
• “Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.” – Oscar Wilde
• “The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well.” – John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Quotes on achievement

• “Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
• “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.” – Bruce Lee
• “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.” Dale Carnegie
• “What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” – Bob Dylan
• “Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.” – Napoleon Hill
• “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” – Helen Keller
• “Comfort is the enemy of achievement.” – Farrah Gray
• “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney
• “High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.” – Charles Kettering
• “There is no shortcut to achievement. Life requires thorough preparation – veneer isn’t worth anything.” – George Washington Carver
• “Achievement is talent plus preparation.” – Malcolm Gladwell

Final Thoughts

The road to success can be long and stressful, and most folks could use guidance and encouragement. The quotes on this list are empowering, enlightening, and energizing, and can help hustlers endure the hardships of life and business. You can use these quotes to inspire your teammates or motivate yourself, or you can share with your clients and audience to give an instant pep talk to anyone who might need one. Many of these sayings are short, sweet, and to the point, and work great in several formats including email openings or sign-offs, social media posts, or motivational speeches.

For more wise words, check out this list of HR quotes , these work-life balance quotes , these creativity quotes for the workplace , this list of team building quotes , and these job satisfaction quotes .

We also have a list of books on motivation at work , a list of fun facts of the day for work , a list of quotes on jobs and life , and a list of slogans for team building .

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FAQ: Success quotes

Here are answers to common questions about success quotes. 

What are success quotes?

Success quotes are motivational sayings that reflect on the secrets of success and inspire listeners to strive for excellence. These quotes encourage listeners to embrace and overcome failure and put in the effort to achieve great results. The authors of these quotes aimed to share the secrets to greatness to help others live their best lives and live up to their true potential.

What are some good success quotes for work? 

Some good success quotes for work include:

The best quotes on success inspire determination, hard work, resilience, and teamwork.

How can you use quotes on success?

You can use quotes on success during pep talks and meetings, motivational speeches, retreats and conferences, and team emails. Some workplaces regularly send success quotes to employees on a weekly or monthly basis. You can also use these quotes on social media.

Author: Angela Robinson

Marketing Coordinator at teambuilding.com. Team building content expert. Angela has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and worked as a community manager with Yelp to plan events for businesses.

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The entrepreneurial journey: Starting and growing your business

Posted: November 16, 2023 | Last updated: November 16, 2023

Welcome to the entrepreneurial journey—where dreams take root, challenges become triumphs, and businesses evolve. From the inception of an idea to strategic scaling, navigating global markets, and leaving a lasting legacy, join us on this journey that encapsulates the diverse and dynamic path of entrepreneurship.

Ready? Swipe through and learn what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

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The beginning steps

Entrepreneurship thrives on simplicity. A vision sparks, fueled by passion. Here, we honor the genesis—the moment your idea takes root, setting the stage for a transformative journey into the world of business.

Market research mastery

Success hinges on understanding. Master market research as your compass. Delve deep into audience insights, identify opportunities, and dissect competition. This isn't just data; it's the strategic core fueling your business trajectory.

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Business plan breakdown

Think of a business plan as your silent partner. More than paperwork, it's the architectural blueprint of success. It's essential for any budding business owner to have a plan of action to point you in the direction you want to go.

Legal labyrinth

The legal realm is an entrepreneurial rite. Make sure you get the correct advice to guide you on how to untangle the legal web, guiding your journey from choosing a business structure to navigating permits. Learn to navigate regulations, ensuring your venture operates securely within legal boundaries.

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Funding fables

Dollars meet dreams in the realm of funding. From strategic bootstrapping to courting investors, funding is critical to accelerate the growth of your business.

Strategic scaling foundations

Scaling demands a delicate dance between ambition and practicality. Prioritize scalability in your initial business model. Ensure each operational component seamlessly expands as your customer base grows, laying the groundwork for sustained growth.

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Data-driven decision mastery

In scaling, data becomes your guiding star. Leverage analytics to understand customer behavior and market trends. Data-driven decision-making minimizes risks, allowing you to confidently navigate scaling complexities while maintaining a customer-centric approach.

Cultivating cohesive team dynamics

Your team is the backbone. Cultivate a culture where every member feels valued and aligned with the mission. Fostering open communication and recognizing individual strengths create a powerhouse of collective innovation, propelling your business forward.

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Strategic hiring protocols

Strategic growth demands strategic hiring. Identify roles crucial for scaling and hire individuals for their potential to evolve with the company. A scalable team is versatile, adapting to evolving needs and contributing to your business' dynamic growth.

Holistic marketing mastery

Beyond conventional methods, embrace a holistic marketing approach. Combine digital strategies, content marketing, and traditional channels for a comprehensive brand presence. Craft a compelling narrative that resonates, fostering brand loyalty amid evolving market dynamics.

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Data-backed marketing campaigns

In the digital age, every marketing move should be backed by data. Analyze campaign performance, identify audience resonance, and adapt accordingly. This data-backed approach ensures your marketing efforts yield measurable results, contributing to overall business success.

Strategic social media engagement

Social media isn't just a platform; it's a dynamic tool for brand building. Strategically engage with your audience, fostering a community around your brand. Authenticity and consistency transform your social media presence into a powerful catalyst for brand awareness and customer loyalty.

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Adaptability in the digital landscape

Social media landscapes evolve rapidly. Stay ahead by adapting to emerging platforms and trends. Embrace innovative content formats, collaborate with influencers, and participate in trending conversations. Your brand's adaptability in the digital sphere is pivotal for maintaining relevance and capturing new audiences.

Cultivating a culture of innovation

Innovation isn't a sporadic event; it's a mindset cultivated within your business. Foster a culture where every team member is encouraged to ideate and contribute. An innovation-driven culture propels your business beyond industry norms, turning ideas into transformative actions.

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Adapting to market changes

The entrepreneurial landscape is ever changing. Successful businesses are those adept at pivoting in response to market shifts. Regularly assess market dynamics, consumer behavior, and industry trends. An agile approach positions your business to proactively adapt, staying ahead in the face of change.

Learning from entrepreneurial missteps

Missteps are inevitable, but they're not roadblocks; they're learning opportunities. Reflect on mistakes, extract valuable lessons, and integrate those insights into your business strategy.

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Continuous improvement mindset

Instill a continuous improvement mindset within your team. Encourage feedback, conduct regular retrospectives, and embrace a proactive approach to refinement. The journey to success is a dynamic process of constant enhancement, ensuring that each iteration brings your business closer to its peak performance.

Building a lasting legacy

Your business extends beyond profit margins; it's a legacy in the making. Establish a purpose-driven narrative that transcends transactions. Whether through sustainable practices, philanthropy, or a commitment to social impact, crafting a legacy ensures your business leaves an indelible mark on the world.

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Corporate citizenship as a core value

Beyond products and services, businesses play a vital role in community development. Integrate corporate social responsibility into your core values. From supporting local initiatives to championing causes, your business becomes a force for positive change, forging deep connections within the communities it serves.

Exit strategies

Planning for the next chapter is as crucial as the first. Explore exit strategies that align with your long-term goals. Whether through acquisition, succession, or strategic partnerships, a well-thought-out exit plan ensures a smooth transition and safeguards the legacy of your entrepreneurial endeavor.

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Crisis management

Entrepreneurship encounters storms and unforeseen challenges. Navigate with resilience, implementing crisis management strategies. Entrepreneurs need to weather turbulent times, ensuring their business emerges stronger on the other side.

Customer feedback loop

Your customers hold invaluable insights. Establish a continuous feedback loop, actively seeking and implementing customer input. This iterative process not only enhances products and services, but also fosters a customer-centric business approach.

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Time is treasure

Time management is the entrepreneur's ally. Explore productivity hacks to optimize your workflow. From efficient task prioritization to adopting effective tools, it's critical to educate yourself on strategies to maximize your time and output.

Achieving work-life balance

Entrepreneurship is a juggling act. Strive for balance, recognizing the importance of personal well-being. Implement work-life balance strategies to prevent burnout, ensuring sustained productivity and fulfillment in both your professional and personal spheres.

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Navigating entrepreneurial storms

The entrepreneurial journey weaves through unforeseen challenges. Equip yourself with resilience and crisis management strategies to navigate turbulent times. This isn't just about survival; it's about emerging stronger and turning challenges into opportunities for growth.

Leading with heart

Leadership transcends authority; it's about leading with empathy and mindfulness. Explore the transformative impact of mindful leadership. This isn't just a leadership style; it's a journey that fosters a positive organizational culture and propels your team toward shared success.

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The role of businesses in community development

Beyond profits, businesses bear a social responsibility. Integrate community development into your business ethos. This isn't just corporate social responsibility; it's a commitment to making a positive impact, paying it forward to the communities that nurture your growth.

Reflections on the entrepreneurial Journey

Celebrate milestones and reflect on the odyssey. This isn't just nostalgia; it's a strategic pause to gather insights. By looking back, you're not just remembering: you're gathering wisdom to propel your business forward.

Sources: (Entrepreneur) (University of San Diego)

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Guide to success: 6 digital business lessons

Starting a digital business can be an exhilarating yet challenging journey, one filled with learning opportunities and moments of discovery.

When I embarked on this adventure with my Droid Island business in 2016, I was a neophyte in the vast digital landscape.

However, over the years, through trial and error, I've gleaned valuable lessons that have significantly shaped my business strategy and success.

Here, I share six pivotal lessons that any entrepreneur venturing into the digital world should take to heart.

Harnessing search engine data for content creation

The power of search engine data is immense. In the early days of Droid Island, I learned to leverage this data to understand what potential customers were searching for and what content resonated with them.

This insight allowed me to create targeted content for my website, which I repurposed for social media platforms. By aligning my content with the interests and needs of my audience, I was able to attract more visitors to my site and engage with them on social media, creating a cohesive digital presence that drove business growth.

Integrating digital platforms for a unified presence

One of my key realisations was the importance of integrating various digital platforms to build a larger digital footprint.

Website content, YouTube, podcasts, blogs, social media, e-mail lists and push notifications are not standalone channels. Instead, they work synergistically to amplify your message and reach a broader audience.

Understanding how to effectively combine these elements enabled me to create a unified and compelling digital presence that captivated and retained customers across multiple touchpoints.

Diversifying your channel strategy

In the digital age, putting all your eggs in one basket is a strategy doomed to fail.

Early on, I learned my audience was scattered across various platforms, both traditional and digital.

Embracing this diversity, I ventured to tap into these different channels, tailoring my approach to meet the unique characteristics and preferences of each audience segment.

This diversification not only expanded my reach but also safeguarded my business against the volatility of digital platforms.

Avoiding platform dependency

Closely related to diversification is the lesson of avoiding platform dependency.

In the fast-evolving digital landscape, platforms can rise and fall, change algorithms or shift policies in ways that can significantly affect your business.

I learned to build my digital presence in a way that was not overly reliant on any single platform. This approach provided stability and ensured that changes in platform algorithms or policies had a minimal impact on my overall digital strategy.

Learning from successful digital entrepreneurs

There's a wealth of knowledge to be gained from those who have trodden the path before you.

I made it a point to follow digital entrepreneurs who had achieved the kind of success I aspired to. By studying their strategies, understanding their failures and reverse-engineering their successes, I could extract valuable insights and apply them to my business.

Learning from the best accelerated my growth and saved me from many potential pitfalls.

Embracing experimentation and failure

Finally, one of the most liberating lessons I learned was the importance of experimentation and the value of failure.

In the digital realm, what works today may not work tomorrow, and the only way to stay ahead is to experiment continually.

Initially, the fear of failure held me back, but I soon realised each failure brought me closer to success. Embracing failure as a part of the learning process allowed me to iterate quickly, refine my strategies and discover what truly worked for my business.

The journey of building Droid Island was one of continuous learning and adaptation. The digital landscape is perpetually changing, offering both challenges and opportunities.

The lessons I've shared here have been instrumental in navigating this landscape and building a resilient, thriving business. Everything I learned building the brick-and-mortar store, and then eventually turning it into an e-commerce business that deepened my knowledge in digital marketing and e-commerce.

When people saw the work I did with Droid Island, people started coming to me more and more about how I had built that business, and when the pandemic hit, I knew that I was being called on for more. I was equipped to help entrepreneurs across the region build their businesses online.

To those embarking on their digital business ventures, I hope these insights serve as a guide and inspiration on your journey to success.

Remember, the digital world is vast and the opportunities are limitless. With the right approach, perseverance and willingness to learn from successes and failures, you can carve out your own path to digital business success.

Keron Rose is a digital strategist who works with businesses to build their digital presence and monetise their platforms.

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Here's how much money I made as a software engineer at Meta, Apple, and Oracle

• Sandeep Rao is a software engineer who has worked at Meta, Apple, and Oracle. 
• When he first started his career as a new graduate, his compensation was only $15,000.
• He explains how, thanks to high performance and negotiation skills, he now makes nearly $700,000. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sandeep Rao, a 32-year-old software engineer based in San Jose, California. Business Insider has verified his income with documentation. This essay has been edited for length and clarity.

My salary journey in Big Tech has seen my total compensation — which includes base salary, bonuses, and stocks — increase from $15,000 in 2012 to $685,000 in 2024.

I'm a staff software engineer and have worked at three different tech companies, moving from Oracle to Apple to Meta. Over my career, I've led the development of successful software apps and features from scratch that are used every day by millions of people across the world.

While I have made my career moves primarily based on which areas of software engineering I'd get to work on, compensation is also important to me, so I've been strategic and negotiated for higher salaries with each move.

Tech companies use tools like additional equity to retain high-performing employees. In my experience, if you're consistently a top performer at your organization, it's certainly possible to keep your pay at or above market level and have a rewarding career within your company.

I took a low-paying job to get my foot in the door

While I got my undergraduate degree in electrical engineering , I realized midway through college that software engineering was my passion and pivoted to pursue a career in software instead.

My first job was as a software developer at Oracle in India. While Oracle isn't generally low-paying in the tech industry, my salary of 850,000 rupees, or $15,000, was low compared to what new grads were making at that time in competing Big Tech companies like Microsoft or Amazon because it was a "take it or leave it" new grad offer.

The work was unappealing to me because it didn't align with my career interests — I didn't want to continue building expertise in that specific area of software engineering — but I took it to get my foot in the door of a Big Tech company and build credibility.

I knew I eventually wanted to end up where all the action is — Silicon Valley . I worked at Oracle from 2012 to 2014, and during this time, I applied to graduate schools in the US because I felt a formal computer science degree would help me compete with the talented people in the Valley.

I got accepted into a graduate program in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. I left behind my family and friends in India and moved to the US with nothing but a suitcase and $65,000 in student debt.

Grad school was hard, but the doors it opened for me made the struggle worth it.

I was ecstatic to get a job at Apple

I finished grad school and got a job as a software engineer at Apple in Cupertino, California, where my base salary was $115,000.

I was ecstatic to work at one of the best companies in the world and felt my dreams were coming true. But I realized I wanted to work on more direct user-facing applications rather than on technology that ran under the hood.

Initially, I considered looking for new opportunities within Apple, but between high taxes, the high cost of living, and my student loans, I felt more compelled to switch companies, given that I'd likely receive a significant salary bump .

I had gotten a very small cost-of-living raise on my base salary at Apple, but it wasn't significant; not getting a bigger raise wasn't a big motivator in my decision to change companies, but it certainly made my choice easier.

My negotiation skills helped me get a 10% salary increase

At the end of 2017, I moved to Meta (then Facebook) in Menlo Park, California. I wanted to experience the culture of younger internet-based companies whose products are used by billions of people.

When I received my offer, I did my research to get a clear understanding of what my market value was and what salary I wanted to land on. I also learned what parts of my total compensation are negotiable, such as stocks and the sign-on bonus, and what is non-negotiable, like base salary and annual bonuses.

I was prepared to negotiate and walked away with an offer of $140,000, which was 10% more than their original offer.

In 2021, I landed a large-scale project at Meta that added a lot of value to the Messenger app and worked with several cross-functional teams across engineering, design, data science, and legal.

My accomplishments, such as this one, and high performance at work got me the promotions, visibility, and leverage to negotiate for higher pay and a successful salary journey.

Every year between 2018 to 2023, my base salary increased — as did my total compensation — through a combination of performance-based yearly stock refreshers, additional boosts from promotions, and stock market appreciation.

Related stories

Compensation in a tech career usually gets more and more equity-heavy than salary-heavy, so base salaries don't increase as quickly as equity, but my salary and total annual compensation steadily rose:

2012-2014: $15,000 total compensation

Grad School

2014-2016: $0 total compensation

Student loan debt: $65,000

2016: $130,000 total compensation

2017: $165,000 total compensation

2018: $230,000 total compensation

2019: $240,000 total compensation

2020: $350,000 total compensation (promotion)

2021: $510,000 total compensation

2022: $375,000 total compensation (promotion, but total compensation dropped due to stock price drop)

2023: $545,000 total compensation

In 2024, I'm projected to make $685,000 through a combination of base salary, bonuses, and stock.

Five strategies for increasing my compensation package

Over the years, I learned five salary strategies that helped me grow my salary and overall compensation:

1. Always do your homework about market rates for your role, level, and location — especially when you switch jobs.

Switching jobs is a good way to increase your income.

Even if money may not be the primary motivator for a job switch, I always make sure to be conscious and strategic about my compensation by doing salary research to avoid leaving any money on the table.

When I started doing salary research during my switch to Meta, I found out my market value was much higher than what I was making at Apple at that time. This helped me start my negotiations with Meta at the market rate rather than the salary I was making.

I used Levels.fyi , Blind , and Glassdoor to find salary information and clearly understand my market value. Keep yourself updated on these benchmarks even if you don't plan on a job change anytime soon, so you know you're on par with the market, and any salary difference is offset by other factors such as better work-life balance.

2. Never let your bad salary "baggage" carry over to your new job.

If your salary isn't up to market standards right now, don't let it affect your pay at the next job. Otherwise, it'll lead to a cycle where you'll be underpaid for the rest of your career.

Employers and recruiters could use your salary history to give you only a modest raise, while your actual market value could easily be double or triple your most recent salary.

In California, labor laws make it illegal for employers to ask you about your current salary and salary history. You're also allowed to ask potential employers for the pay range for the position you're applying for.

If your state has similar protections, just being aware of this law can help you make any corrections to your pay during negotiations. This helped me start offer negotiations from my market value instead of my current pay.

3. Sometimes, you have to take a leap of faith to make that 10x impact on your career.

That could involve switching from a non-tech job to a tech job or taking a short-term hit for long-term gain. For example, I picked Oracle for my first job despite the low pay and unappealing work so I could build credibility to get into a Tier 1 grad school.

I also took a loan of about $65,000 to pay for Carnegie Mellon, even though I could have chosen to go to a cheaper public university.

Deciding to work at Oracle and attend Carnegie Mellon cost me a few years and a lot of debt, but doing so opened doors unlike anything else, and I haven't looked back ever since.

4. Negotiate to keep your base salary from falling behind

It's inevitable for your salary to fall behind as you stay longer at a company, especially in tech due to restricted stock unit (RSU) "cliffs."

Most RSU packages offered to new employees in the tech industry have a two- to four-year vesting period. Unless the employer offers a significant pay bump along the way, total compensation usually takes a drop after this vesting period. Many companies also offer annual performance-based stock refreshers to lower this salary gap, but they're usually not as large as the initial grant. 

If you love working at your company and feel forced to move just to get a raise, you can ask your senior leadership to make a "correction." After all, it's much more expensive and time-consuming for employers to hire new people than to retain good employees.

Most Big Tech companies have employee retention programs like additional or discretionary equity. Additional equity programs are mainly used to retain high-performing employees, so they're usually highly selective.

This is how I was able to keep my compensation at or above market level despite spending six years at Meta. When I was reaching the end of my vesting period in my fourth year, I had a conversation with my senior leadership to see if there was any room for a pay correction so I could go back to focusing on my work 100% without worrying about salary.

Being prepared with my predicted compensation drop and market data greatly helped me build a cogent narrative going in. If you're consistently a top performer at your organization, it's certainly possible to keep your pay at or above market level and have a rewarding career within your company.

5. Don't assume people will reward your work or anticipate your needs — ask.

Always ask for what you want , whether it's a raise or that interesting project that just came in. The worst that will happen is you'll get a "no." If you don't ask, nobody will know, or even worse, people may assume that you're happy with what you have and move on. 

I used this strategy when I heard of a new company initiative and asked to be a founding engineer because I was looking to create more impact in my role. Despite the high risk and ambiguity involved, I successfully delivered on the projects, which eventually led to a promotion. None of this would've been possible if I hadn't asked. 

At the end of the day, you're your biggest advocate when it comes to your salary and career journey. There's no substitute for hard work, but being strategic about how you achieve your goals can go a long way. Sometimes, you have to take big risks and step out of your comfort zone to get that high-paying dream job.

If you want to share your career progression and salary journey, email Jane Zhang at [email protected] .

Watch: Nearly 50,000 tech workers have been laid off — but there's a hack to avoid layoffs

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PricingService.ai Democratizes Dynamic Pricing in the Hospitality Industry

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His academic and professional journey is rooted in the study and application of pricing optimization, a field he has contributed to since his doctoral studies. Starting with revenue management for airlines and the hotel industry, he expanded his expertise into consulting for various sectors, including e-commerce and ridesharing, showing the versatility and applicability of pricing optimization across industries.

A pivotal moment in his career came with his work for DiDi, a leading ride-hailing company in China, which illuminated the broader potential applications of pricing optimization. He observed that while industries like airlines had been pioneers in pricing optimization since the 1970s, sectors such as the hotel industry lagged behind, adhering to outdated practices despite the critical role of pricing optimization in their operations.

How Pricingservice.ai Levels the Playing Field with AI-Driven Pricing Optimization

Identifying a significant gap in the market, Dan saw an opportunity to bring advanced, AI-driven pricing optimization to independent hotels, which represent about two-thirds of the market yet lack the sophisticated pricing strategies of their franchised counterparts. Many of these hotels, he noted, rely on rudimentary pricing due to the prohibitive costs of acquiring and maintaining advanced pricing systems.

To address this challenge, he envisioned a subscription-based service offering cutting-edge, AI-powered pricing optimization delivered via the cloud. This innovative approach led to the creation of pricingservice.ai, which democratizes access to advanced pricing strategies, making them accessible and affordable even for smaller, independent hotels. By leveraging cloud technology, the service eliminates the need for hotels to hire dedicated personnel or manage complex software systems, significantly reducing costs and leveling the playing field in the hospitality industry.

In 2021, Dan co-founded Pricingservice.ai and secured its first customer in December of the same year, with the company officially forming in 2023. The co-founder's background as an Associate Dean of Research and Academics at Leeds, specializing in advanced data analysis and holding a keen interest in addressing substantive business problems through research, played an important role in the venture's creation. The motivation to create a real-world impact led to collaboration with two other co-founders: Professor David Li at the City University of Hong Kong and Matt Schwartz, the Chief Technology Officer at SageHospitality. Their collective expertise and the recognition of an opportunity in the hotel industry were instrumental in launching this innovative pricing service.

Historically, setting the right prices for hotel rooms was a grueling task, burdened by the need to consider countless variables ranging from event schedules to weather patterns. The use of AI in this domain has revolutionized the process, enabling automated systems to make pricing decisions with minimal human intervention. PricingService.ai's system exemplifies this shift by integrating with leading property management systems, such as those provided by Oracle, to offer dynamic pricing updates. This integration allows the system to adjust hotel room prices every few hours based on a comprehensive analysis of data, including historic booking patterns, upcoming events, competitor pricing, and even weather forecasts. This level of responsiveness was previously unimaginable, as manual adjustments in response to rapid market changes, like a surge in demand due to a Taylor Swift concert, would be too slow and impractical.

The system was developed from scratch, and incorporates custom algorithms designed to optimize hotel pricing effectively. This AI-driven tool not only enhances the efficiency of pricing strategies but also ensures that hotels can respond to market dynamics swiftly, maximizing revenue and staying competitive in a fast-paced industry. PricingService.ai is not just about leveraging AI for better pricing decisions; it's also a symbol of redefining the future of hotel revenue management by making it more adaptive, intelligent, and efficient. Through their innovative use of AI, the founders envision a new paradigm for the hotel industry, where data-driven insights lead to smarter business decisions and ultimately, greater success in a highly competitive marketplace.

A hot topic in today’s daily conversations, Dan stresses the importance of Artificial Intelligence in our day-to-day lives, and viewing it as a tool rather than the enemy, or something that may “replace” jobs in the future: 

“We use what we have for the people, not against the people. The idea is to get that idea back, man working seamlessly with machines.” 

Transforming Research into a Revenue Boost

Starting a business can happen by chance, not just by planning. Dan’s story is one of a researcher who didn't set out to be a business owner, but ended up becoming one because of his desire to make his research useful to others. His work led to creating a tool that helps small hotels set their prices using advanced technology, a task usually too expensive for them to manage on their own.

The idea came to life after noticing a lot of interest from tech companies in his research. These companies saw value in his work and even offered him jobs, but he chose to focus on helping smaller hotels instead. He wanted to use his skills to make a real difference, allowing these smaller players to compete by offering them a low-cost, high-tech solution for setting their room prices.

Dan notes that one of the best parts of this adventure has been seeing how much his tool has helped. For example, a small hotel in Yorktown, Virginia, managed to increase its revenue by 25% thanks to the tool. This hotel used to charge $199 for rooms in July, but now they can charge up to $450, all because the tool helps them set the best prices without needing to hire extra staff.

His story shows that starting a business isn't just about wanting to be an entrepreneur. It's also about wanting to do something meaningful with what you know and can do. Helping others succeed and making a positive impact can be the most rewarding parts of being in business.

The business was recognized with a EX20 People’s Choice Award at HITEC Toronto in June 2023, the largest hospitality technology conference in the world. More recently, PricingService.ai participated in both NVC Deep Tech Competition and NVC General Competition at CU Boulder and is the only team that is a finalist in both competitions. The final showcase for NVC General Competition will be on April 17 at the Boulder Theater.  

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https://www.nist.gov/mep/successstories/2024/maintaining-maxwell-products-lean-journey

Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)

Maintaining maxwell products' lean journey, with the help of: university of utah manufacturing extension partnership (uumep) center.

Maxwell Products of Salt Lake City, Utah, is a leading manufacturer of pavement maintenance solutions that was founded in 1975. It currently has a team of 75 who work diligently to make product improvements, industry-defining innovations, and advanced, patented technologies. They have devoted years to research and development to make sure their road repair solutions are cutting-edge. 

The Challenge

Our work with iMpact upped the game. We are starting to see that more empowerment and engagement on our team results in better consistency and quality in our product. We have a few key positions in our processes where we rely on the people to get the processes right, and those processes have improved. We have a mindset of constantly working to be better so we don’t go back to where we were. — Jared Pringle , Operations Director, Maxwell Products

MEP's Role

iMpact Utah, a University of Utah MEP sub-recipient,  worked with Maxwell Products to increase lean understanding within the leadership team and with line workers. This effort included onsite lean coaching involving Maxwell’s operations director, plant manager, and production manager. Maxwell also completed a Lean 101 training and exercise and a Pit Crew Challenge continuous improvement event. To address their automation needs, iMpact Utah helped them implement a stacking system that eliminated the need to hand-stack boxes. All services were delivered by iMpact Utah subject matter experts.

Upon completing Lean coaching, the Lean 101 training, the Pit Crew Challenge, and implementing a new automation cell, managers noticed a mindset shift in line leaders and workers. More active participants were needed to reach established objectives. They had a newfound commitment to do the job better and be aware of opportunities to improve.

 As a result of all of the continuous improvement, leadership, and collaboration training, the company has seen an improvement in employee retention. Removing the physical demands of stacking boxes also helped that cause and improved overall workplace culture. The newfound commitment to improvement is reflected in product testing, which has resulted in better product quality and consistency. Lastly, implementing the new stacking system has increased manufacturing volumes and saved time.

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‘If world says I can’t, I say…’: Entrepreneur Srikanth Bolla on overcoming odds

Blind entrepreneur srikanth bolla's journey is set to debut on the silver screen starring rajkummar rao on may 10. it tells the story of bolla who fought a legal battle to study and was later named in the world economic forum's young global leaders 2021 list..

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• Born blind, Srikanth Bolla fought for his right to education
• Despite rejections, he secured admission to MIT with full financial aid
• A biographical film chronicling his journey is set to release on May 10

Srikanth Bolla's life story is a testament to the power of determination and resilience in the face of adversity. Born blind into a farming family in Seetharamapuram, Andhra Pradesh, he defied all odds to become an inspiration for millions around the world.

He was denied opportunities and even advised by some relatives to be disposed of, Bolla's journey took an unexpected turn. Despite being initially rejected by schools due to his disability, he fought for his right to education. Through a legal battle, he secured the opportunity to study science and maths, paving the way for his future accomplishments.

Not affected by setbacks, Bolla set his sights on India's prestigious engineering colleges, only to face further rejection. He was not accepted at India's prestigious IITs due to his visual impairity. Bolla refused to let adversity define him. Instead, he forged his path, eventually securing admission to the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, marking a historic milestone as the first international blind student to receive full financial aid.

"I was told by top coaching institutes that the course load would be like pouring rain on a small sapling, But I have no regrets. If IIT didn't want me, I didn't want IIT either," Bolla told BBC in an interview.

Bolla came back to Hyderabad in 2012 and started Bollant Industries. His company makes eco-friendly stuff and hires people with disabilities. Bollant has factories in Hubli (Karnataka), Nizamabad (Telangana), and two in Hyderabad (Telangana).

He also defied hurdles in sports and, in fitting reply to being ignored at PT class in his school, has represented India in cricket and played chess at the national level.

Bolla, now 32, stands as the CEO of Bollant Industries and has the backing of influential figures such as Ratan Tata. His vision has transcended boundaries, making an impact on both the environment and society.

His remarkable journey is now set to be portrayed on the silver screen, with a biopic featuring actor Rajkummar Rao in the lead role. Scheduled for release on May 10.

Bolla's journey, from facing rejection by prestigious institutions to leading a company and earning a spot on the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders 2021 list, serves as a powerful reminder that perseverance and self-belief can conquer any obstacle.

“The world looks at me and says, ‘Srikanth, you can do nothing,’ I look back at the world and say I can do anything," said Bolla. Published By: Sonu Vivek Published On: Apr 12, 2024