Running a small business can be tough and demanding at times. What motivates you to open your doors up to customers each day?

When things get tough, it is always good to remember why you started your business in the first place. So, we put together these 15 great quotes from inspiring leaders, which obviously include small business owners just like you.

To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart. – Thomas Watson, Sr.

1. I can’t imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got. – Walter Cronkite

2. I’m happy as long as I am making other people happy. – Dominique Ansel, Dominique Ansel Bakery

3. I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. – Steve Jobs

4. I make a conscious effort to keep things in perspective when I get burned out. It is easy to get stuck in the daily grind, but if you think about all the distance you have covered, and what lies ahead, it is much easier to feel motivated and optimistic. – Alex Litoff, Event Farm

5. Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out. – Robert Collier

6. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle

7. I’m a big fan of small business ownership. I think it’s the backbone of American innovation. But to be successful, you first have to have the courage to go for it. – Bill Rancic

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8. Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business. – Zig Ziglar

9. Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy. – Norman Schwarzkopf

10. Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

11. The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it. – Debbie Fields

12. There is no royal, flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it. For if I have accomplished anything in life, it is because I have been willing to work hard. – C.J. Walker

13. Small business isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s for the brave, the patient and the persistent. It’s for the overcomer. – Unknown

14. 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

15. “We are really competing against ourselves, we have no control over how other people perform.”
– Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO Mashable