You are on your way - success is always personal - enjoy the journey!!

The first one gets the oyster, the second gets the shell. – Andrew Carnegie. It sounds brutal, and one doesn’t become a steel baron without nerves of steel, but there is a harsh truth in this statement. Resources are exploited by businesses to achieve their goals. They’re not a collective, sharing the wealth, so like the early bird, if you want the worm, then get up early.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. – Walt Disney. The more business quotes from these masters of industry and history, the more you notice a common thread knitting them together. They tend to same things only in different ways. That alone should make it clear that actions speak louder than words, to use another old axiom.

Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right! – Henry Ford. This statement might confuse you at first, but once you get it, like a Zen koan, it makes perfect sense. What the father of automotive?automation?is imparting with this quote is that success is as much a mind game as it is determined by fate. With the right attitude, you can do almost anything.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure. – Colin Powell. Inspiration is great, but there’s no point in reinventing the wheel. The general is right. Success is being prepared, working hard and learning from mistakes, as many others have also stated. If we can edit the quote a wee bit, we’d add luck to fill out the recipe for success. There’s always an unknown element in the mix.

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. Many people have it backwards, struggling to achieve success in order to feel good about themselves. But the irony is that it’s in the doing, not the goal, where the happiness resides. Even if you fail at your enterprise, if you enjoy the process, then you’ll be happy.

Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable. – Coco Chanel. If you’re keeping your eyes on what can go wrong, it will go wrong. Successful people strive to move on. They aren’t ignorant of failure, but they’re also not stymied by it. They don’t know what failure is because to them it’s merely a bump in the road, not its terminus.

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.– Thomas Edison. The famous story about Edison and the incandescent lightbulb, which took thousands of tries to find a filament that would burn but not extinguish, is proof to the pudding of his statement. You just never know what’s around the corner until you get there.

I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity. – Oprah Winfrey. We spoke of luck as a crucial element to any success. There are always those forces beyond our control, but there are also those forces that are within our ability to regulate. If opportunities are rare, then one must be ready for them when they come in order to take advantage. That might not be the definition of luck, but it does feel like good fortune.

I never dreamed about success. I worked for it. – Estée Lauder. People can get lost in thought. In their mind’s eye success is clearly laid out. It’s as if they’re already there. Daydreaming might be creative, but creativity takes work. You’re not going to get anywhere standing in place.

Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games. – Babe Ruth. This has been said in many ways, but sometimes it takes the sports analogy to get it to sink through. Of course, for Ruth this wasn’t a metaphor but fact. However, it also applies to business. We can’t rest on past glory.

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. – Vidal Sassoon. It’s a funny way to look at things, but there’s truth in the fact that success is not something we are handed. It is something we must work at. Success isn’t inheritance. While we might get handed great wealth, power and prestige, it’s what we do with it that counts.

The only way around is through.– Robert Frost. What the great American poet is saying is that there is no way to avoid what must be done. We cannot go around the difficulties in our life or business but face them head-on and work through them. Just having the courage to do that is the hallmark of success.

The best investment is in the tools of one’s own trade.– Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin was one of the founders of the United States of America, but even beyond that revolutionary achievement, he was an inventor and businessman who knew the importance of having the right tools for the job.

If you can change people's lives, you have a business. - Richard Branson. The best businesses come from people’s bad personal experiences. If you just keep your eyes open, you’re going to find something that frustrates you, and then you think, ‘well I could maybe do it better than it’s being done,’ and there you have a business

Success is always personal