There are many stumbling blocks when it comes to succeeding in the small business landscape. To help you through these challenges and motivate you, we’ve gathered some words of wisdom from inspirational entrepreneurs who believe in hard work, passion and persistence.
“Going from PayPal, I thought: ‘Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?’ Not from the perspective, ‘What’s the best way to make money?’”
“My success in Dick Smith electronics and Australian Geographic was just to go around the world and copy the best, pinch the best ideas from everyone I could see … I noticed that each company I went to – I’d go to England, Canada, America – had different ideas, so I took the best of them, and that’s why I made so much money.”
“You don’t have to have values for a company. They can be a team, department, office, anything right. I think the act of getting a group of people together and sitting down and saying ‘ what do we stand for’ and ‘what do we not want to lose’ is more important than ‘what do we want to be?’”
“The reason I’ve been able to be so financially successful is my focus has never, ever for one minute been money.”
“Often we get people who come before us whose ideas aren’t fully evolved yet. What often happens is we see people come in and they are so in love with what they think they’re going to do they actually can’t listen. The critical thing to business growth is your ability to listen. We were given to ears and one mouth for a reason.”
Written by: Thea Christie
Smart Company is the leading online publication in Australia for free news, information and resources catering to Australia’s entrepreneurs, small and medium business owners and business managers.
