Small Business Quotes

Growing a small business requires a lot of hard work, patience, and time. But it is so rewarding, don’t you agree? If you’re looking for a little motivation, you’re in the right place! I’m sharing 121 small business quotes to help you stay on track or even take that first step.

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Cartoon of a person working in a small restaurant, with two chairs outside the bar. — Get inspired with our small business quotes!

“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
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vidal Sassoon
“It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” – Scott Belsky
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” – Mark Twain
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” – Drew Houston
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates
“If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn
“The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” – Mark Zuckerberg
“Chase the vision, not the money; the money will end up following you.” – Tony Hsieh
“Whatever you do, be different – that was the advice my mother gave me, and I can’t think of better advice for an entrepreneur.” – Anita Roddick
“Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” – Chris Grosser
“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller
“If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.” – Pierre Omidyar
“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” – Zig Ziglar
“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
“If you want to achieve greatness stop asking for permission.” – Anonymous
“The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.” – Colin R. Davis
“Success is not in what you have, but who you are.” – Bo Bennett
“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
“I never dreamed about success, I worked for it.” – Estee Lauder
“Success is not the destination, but the road that you’re on. Being successful means that you’re working hard and walking your walk every day. You can only live your dream by working hard towards it.” – Will Smith
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” – Maya Angelou
“Success is not how high you have climbed, but how you make a positive difference to the world.” – Roy T. Bennett
“Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” – Drew Houston
“The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.” – Peter Drucker
“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” – Warren Bennis
“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” – Steve Jobs
“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” – Sam Walton
“Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember, the only taste of success some people get is to take a bite out of you.” – Zig Ziglar
“The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.” – Nolan Bushnell
“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” – Bruce Lee
“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” – Thomas Jefferson
“The only way around is through.” – Robert Frost
“What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone, know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.” – Dave Thomas
“If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs.” – Dhirubhai Ambani
“There’s nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team.” — Jason Fried
“And what most people don’t understand is that the bulk of business in this country is small business.” – Alphonso Jackson
“You don’t need to have a 100–person company to develop that idea.” – Larry Page
“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” — Stephen King
“You don’t build a business, you build people, then people build the business.” – Zig Ziglar
“Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.” – Tony Hsieh
“Some people dream of success while other people get up every morning and make it happen.” — Wayne Huizenga
“The most successful entrepreneurs I know are optimistic. It’s part of the job description.” – Caterina Fake
“A person who is quietly confident makes the best leader.” – Fred Wilson
“Don’t count the days: Make the days count.” — Muhammad Ali
“Success is the sum of small efforts – repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier
“The most successful entrepreneurs I know are optimistic. It’s part of the job description.” — Caterina Fake
“One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.” — Michael Korda
“When you support a small business, you support a dream.” – Anonymous
“You can’t be successful in business without taking risks. It’s really that simple.” — Adena Friedman
“A big business starts small.” — Richard Branson
“Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.” – Biz Stone
“Fearlessness is not the absence of fear: It’s the mastery of fear. It’s about getting up one more time when we fall down.” — Arianna Huffington
“It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” — Scott Belsky
“Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion.” – Tony Hsieh
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” — Lao Tzu
“Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” — Chris Grosser
“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of a mistake.” – Meg Whitman
“Always give your best effort, even when the odds are against you.” — Arnold Palmer
“If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business.” — B.C. Forbes
“An entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and a want to create.” – David Karp
“An obstacle is often a stepping stone.” — William Prescott
“To be successful, you must act big, think big, and talk big.” — Aristotle Onassis
“Find a great mentor, someone who has already been through the many challenges of being an entrepreneur.” – Jodi Levine
“Don’t worry about failure: You only have to be right once.” — Drew Houston
“You don’t build a business, you build the people, then people build the business.” — Zig Ziglar
“If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs
“You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct, and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.” — Napoleon Hill
“You don’t need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.” — Larry Page
“A big business starts small.” – Richard Branson
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” —Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.” — Tony Hsieh
“Making something people want includes making a company that people want to work for.” – Sahil Lavingia
“The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.” — Aristotle Onassis
“The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world.” — Marc Benioff
“We need to keep our small businesses healthy in order to keep our economy strong.” – Keith Haynes
“Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” — Sara Blakely
“Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.” — Denis Waitley
“As any small business owner knows, starting a business is not glamorous work.” – Kevin McCarthy
“You can’t do it all. You have to give what you’ve got for the day, and leave the rest for tomorrow.” — Beatrice Dixon
“My best advice to entrepreneurs is this: forget about making mistakes, just do it.” — Ajaero Tony Martins
“A small business is an amazing way to serve and leave an impact on the world you live in.” – Nicole Snow
“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” — Peter F. Drucker
“The biggest mistake a small business can make is to think like a small business.” — Aruna Bhayana
“Failure is not to be feared. It is from failure that most growth comes.” – Dee Hock
“Where do you put the fear when you choose to innovate? The fear is there, but you have to find a place to put it.” — Seth Godin
“The difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do.” — Bill Phillips
“It’s not the government that creates jobs; it’s small businesses.” – Karen Mills
“There is no finish line. There are only mile markers.” – Michael Ventura
“You have to work on the business first before it works for you.” — Idowu Koyenikan
“Never give up. Today is hard and tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.” — Jack Ma
“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffett
“You never achieve real success unless you like what you are doing.” — Dale Carnegie
“Giving a gift from a small business is giving a gift twice.” – Anonymous
“A small business is an amazing way to serve and leave an impact on the world you live in.” — Nicole Snow
“Spend time upfront to invest in systems and processes to make long-term growth sustainable.” – Jeff Platt
“Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading. Buying and selling.” — Anita Roddick
“Support your friend’s business and progression like you support the celebrities that you actually don’t know.” – Anonymous
“Don’t worry about being successful, but work toward being significant and the success will naturally follow.” — Oprah Winfrey
“To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart.” – Thomas Watson Sr.
“Business is not just doing deals; business is having great products, doing great engineering and providing tremendous service to customers. Finally, business is a cobweb of human relationship.” — Henry Ross Perot
“You need to spend all of your time and energy on creating something that actually brings value to the people you’re asking for money!” – Gary Vaynerchuk
“Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.” — Charles F. Kettering
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius
“The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs… one step at a time.” — Joe Girard
“Study successful people and businesses, then do what they did to become successful while making slight modifications to fit your lifestyle, your values, your business model & your goals.” – Clay Clark
“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.” – Mark Twain
“Luck is what you have leftover after you give 100%.” – Langston Coleman
“You build on failure. Use it as a stepping stone and close the door on the past. Don’t try to forget the mistakes, but don’t dwell on it.” – Johnny Cash
“Risk is essential. There is no growth of inspiration in staying within what is safe and comfortable. Once you find out what you do best, why not try something else?” – Alex Noble
“Plan for what is difficult while it is easy. Do what is great while it is small.” — Sun Tzu
“Run a home like you would a small business and treat it with the same seriousness.” – Anthea Turner
“Behind every small business, there’s a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities, the restaurants, cleaners, gyms, hair salons, hardware stores – these didn’t come out of nowhere.” – Paul Ryan
“The Golden Rule for Every Business is this: Put Yourself in your Customer’s Place.” — Orison Swett Marden, American Inspirational Author

Thousands More Quotes For Any Occasion

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