40 Best Inspirational Quotes for Entrepreneurs from Inc.

1. “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” Chinese proverb
2. “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.” Florence Nightingale
3. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” Amelia Earhart
4. “Do it or not. There is no try.” Yoda
   
5. “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.” Mark Twain
6. “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” Lao Tzu
7. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Alice Walker
8. “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” John Lennon
9. “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” Woody Allen
10. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” George Eliot
11. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” Henry Ford
12. “You can’t fall if you don’t climb. But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground.” Unknown
13. “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” Joshua Marine
14. “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” Booker T. Washington
15. “Rarely have I seen a situation where doing less than the other guy is a good strategy.” Jimmy Spithill
16. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” Steve Jobs
17. “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” Stephen Covey
18. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  Maya Angelou
19. “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”  Mark Twain
20. “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
21. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” Anais Nin
22. “There is only one way to avoid criticism: Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”Aristotle
23. “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” Teddy Roosevelt
24. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” George Addair
25. “Fall seven times and stand up eight.” Japanese proverb
    
26. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Robert Frost
27. “The extra mile is a vast, unpopulated wasteland.” (OK, that one’s mine)
28. “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
29. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” Albert Einstein
30. “The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it.” Chinese proverb
31. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” Maya Angelou
32. “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” Wayne Gretzky
33. “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” Farrah Gray
34. “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” Confucius
35. “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” Tony Robbins
36. “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” Beverly Sills
37. “Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.” Booker T. Washington
38. “Remember, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt
39. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” Ayn Rand
40. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” Steve Jobs

Source: Inc.

Mark Cuban, Post-Sterling, on Combating Racism: ‘We All Have Our Bigotry’

For Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, recognizing internal prejudices is the first step to overcoming them. Inc. 

Mark Cuban found himself on the sidelines of controversy last month, when the NBA banned Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life over racist comments. Now in a video interview with Inc., Cuban weighs in on what he does to combat the bigotry and racism he comes across as a manager and an owner…

Why Great Leaders Get Angry–and Show It

Think about remarkably successful entrepreneurs. They’re logical. They’re rational. In the face of crisis or danger or even gross incompetence, they remain steely-eyed, focused, and on point.

They don’t get angry–or at the very least they don’t show their anger.

Unless, of course, they happen to be Steve Jobs. Or Jeff Bezos. Or Bill Gates. Or Larry Ellison. Or…

Most of us were taught that the only way to lead effectively is to eliminate, or at the very least swallow and hide, emotions like anger and frustration. Go professional or go home, right?

Wrong. From Inc.

What do you think? Does the positive impact from anger make the emotional outburst justified?

How to Make Stress Your Friend: Watch TED Video

What’s the 15th largest cause of death in the United States?

If you guessed homicide, skin cancer, or AIDS, nice try, but not correct. According to a fascinating TED talk by Stanford University health psychologist Kelly McGonigal, new studies suggest the answer might be stress. A large study, she reveals, estimated that stress kills up to 20,000 Americans a year.

So how on earth could McGonigal go on to suggest that you make stress your friend? It turns out that only a particular kind of stress takes a serious toll of your health.

What kind? The kind you believe is bad for you.

…Caring creates resilience…You can trust yourself in handling life difficulties and you don’t need to face them yourself. Chasing meaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort.

Entrepreneur Story, Niman Ranch, Beef, Antibiotic, BN Ranch

Why is so difficult to find healthy and inexpensive meats? The Bill Niman story tells some.

Why The Godfather Of Natural Beef Cut Ties With Niman Ranch

Bill Niman spent more than three decades building Niman Ranch into one of the most beloved natural meat suppliers in the nation from just 200 acres of land and six calves. Dozens of high-end chefs, including Jean-Georges and Alfred Portale, as well as the popular burrito chain Chipotle, post the Niman Ranch name on their menus like a badge of honor. But today, Niman has nothing to do with his namesake company. He severed ties in 2007 and began raising cattle and heritage turkeys on a new farm, called BN Ranch.

Niman started BN Ranch in Marin County, Calif., with his wife, Nicolette, to return to his passion of ranching and to prove that raising grass-fed, antibiotic- and hormone-free beef can be a sustainable business model.

“We’re at a point with the cattle business where we were in the early ’80s where we raised the animals without antibiotics and hormones and at that time, the industry laughed at the stuff we were talking about and doing,” he said. “Those things, fortunately, have now become mainstream.” BN Ranch cattle spend their entire lives grazing in open pastures.

Bill Niman’s next move

I point out that Niman Ranch was profitable on the pork side, while the beef business had consistently lost money — mainly because Niman had insisted on buying cattle from his rancher network when they were ready for the feedlot. He had also insisted on owning the feedlot in which the cattle would be fattened up prior to slaughter. In contrast, Niman Ranch did not purchase pigs until they were slaughtered and then bought only as many as it could sell. On the pork side, the company avoided having capital tied up in inventory for long periods of time. But on the beef side, it had cows, barns, real estate, and feed, not to mention exposure to the risks posed by inevitable fluctuations in the prices of all four. Hurlbut and McConnell had argued that Niman Ranch could become profitable just by applying the pork business model to beef. Indeed, that’s essentially what Swain has done. Looking back, did Niman wish he had relented and let Hurlbut have his way?

“That’s a really tough question,” he says. He pauses. “Considering how much the values and ethos of the brand have changed, yeah, I think that would have been a better outcome. Rob would have done a better job of maintaining the values. Would I have been able to stay with it? I don’t know.”

Why not? “Well, remember I got into this because I had a ranch and needed to sell my livestock profitably. I really didn’t want to be in the meat business. As advantageous as it might seem on a spreadsheet to divest all the agricultural parts of the enterprise, that was not appealing to me. I also thought that our standing in the marketplace came from our involvement as ranchers. I wanted Niman Ranch to be the gold standard.”

He pauses again, and his mind wanders. “Yes,” he says at length, “if I had it to do all over, I wouldn’t have given up control, that’s for sure. How did it happen? Little by little, led on by delusions of grandeur and a big payday.” For a moment, he seems lost in thoughts of what might have been.