Thursday, March 3, 2016

NEW

Every entrepreneur knows that the success of their business ultimately rests on their shoulders. Yes, the product you build and the team you hire are important, but your ability to lead is what carries your company.

With that kind of pressure, it’s easy to feel stressed, lonely and overwhelmed at times. Every great leader has faced a challenge that defined their greatness, which is why we often turn to their advice when needed.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, or team leader, here are 50 inspirational quotes on leadership for when you need a little pep talk.

1. "A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be." – Rosalynn Carter

2. “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” – Lao Tzu

3. "It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse." – Adlai E. Stevenson II

4. "Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand." – Colin Powell

5. “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.” – Max DePree

6. "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." – John Quincy Adams

7. “A leader is a dealer in hope.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

8. "A leader…is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind." – Nelson Mandela

9. “He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.” – Aristotle

10. "Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." – Dwight D. Eisenhower

11. "As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others." – Bill Gates

12. “A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit." – John Maxwell

13. “Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily; even if you had no title or position.” – Brian Tracy

14. "The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic." – George Orwell

15. “I start each day by telling myself what a positive influence I am on this world.” – Peter Daisyme

16. “Earn your leadership every day." – Michael Jordan

17. "Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others." – Jack Welch

18. “Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” – Peter Drucker

19. "My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better." – Steve Jobs

20. "The led must not be compelled. They must be able to choose their own leader." – Albert Einstein

21. “Great leaders find ways to connect with their people and help them fulfill their potential.” – Steven J. Stowell

22. "To have long-term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way." – Pat Riley

23. "If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk." – Benjamin Hooks

24. “The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” – Jim Rohn

25. "A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd." – Max Lucado

26. “To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

27. "It is absolutely necessary…for me to have persons that can think for me, as well as execute orders." – George Washington

28. "Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work." – Vince Lombardi

29. “A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.” – Stephen King

30. "A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason."- J.P. Morgan

31. “Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow.” – Chinese Proverb

32. "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." – Martin Luther King, Jr.

33. “No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.” – Andrew Carnegie

34. "Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar." – Orrin Woodward

35. "Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob." – Oscar Wilde

36. “Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” – Sam Walton

37. “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.” – Albert Schweitzer

38. “If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.” – Dolly Parton

39. “I am reminded how hollow the label of leadership sometimes is and how heroic followership can be.” – Warren Bennis

40. “In this world a man must either be an anvil or hammer.” – Henry W. Longfellow

41. “It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. (Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.)” – Latin Proverb

42. “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” – Thomas Carlyle

43. “A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.” – Ovid

44. “You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader” – Henry Ford

45. “Rely on your own strength of body and soul. Take for your star self-reliance, faith, honesty, and industry. Don't take too much advice — keep at the helm and steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. Fire above the mark you intend to hit. Energy, invincible determination with the right motive, are the levers that move the world.” – Noah Porter

46. "Don't blow off another's candle for it won't make yours shine brighter." Jaachynma N.E. Agu

47. “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.” – Herbert Swope

48. “He who has learned how to obey will know how to command.” – Solon

49. “If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.” – Maya Angelou

50. “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt

50 Quotes on Leadership Every Entrepreneur Should Follow

“What should I do with my life?”

Unlike so many other questions you have about your career, this one’s not quite as easy to Google. (Or—shameless plug—to look up on The Daily Muse.)

The good news is, you’re not alone—in fact, I’ll guarantee that everyone has pondered it at some point. And luckily, many of them are willing to share their advice. If you’re at a loss for what steps to take next, read on for the best pieces of advice from a recent Quora thread on this very issue.

1. Talk to People

Meet or call at least 50 people. They can be your friends, relatives, friends of friends/references. Call them up, schedule a meeting, go see them and interact with them on what they are doing. Don’t expect anything, don’t ask them to find you a job, don’t ask them to give you a job. Just talk and meet and have a normal conversation.

Gaurav Munjal
You’d be surprised at how much you can learn just listening to other people talk. OK, yes, sometimes you might not learn much more than how badly traffic was backed up during rush hour. But other times, if you listen (and listen between the lines), you’ll get insight into people’s motivations, hopes, dreams, and ambitions. And when you piece all that together, you can learn how others got to where they are today—and if that’s a path you want to be on, too.

2. Get Started

My suggestion is to do something. Even if it isn’t quite the right thing, it is nevertheless movement that can give you an opportunity to experience. You can spend a lot of time taking tests and getting evaluations for what you might be suited for; ideas always sound good on paper. But words don’t match experience, so acting on something is your best choice.

Kathleen Grace
Regardless of what you generally want to do, it never hurts to start building something. Really anything. Get your portfolio up and running, launch a newsletter, or learn how Periscope works. There are so many things you can do for your career—even if you don’t know what you want to do. And, just like the previous advice, the actual act of simply doing will help further clarify what paths you might want to be on, and which ones you should rule out.

3. Gather Inspiration From Others

Walk into your local bookshop and go straight to the autobiography section. Buy three books from across different industries, societies, and cultures. Focus on biographies that document great and successful people’s early lives, before they were great. Read them before bed. Wake up in the morning and write down 10 things you could do differently that day. Do some of them. Do this the next day. And then do it again.

David Ball
No matter what you do, you probably want to be successful at it. So what better way to get started than by learning how others reached their goals? Keep in mind as you’re reading that these people weren’t born knowing what they wanted to do either.

4. Prepare for a Long Journey

Expect that it is going to take a while and involve several iterations, or so-called “life crises” to figure it out. For most people it’s a long and often unfinished journey.

Andrei Palskoi
One huge misconception about figuring out what you want to do with your life is that you will have a sudden, magical moment of extreme clarity and then have your entire life planned.

In actuality, lives shift constantly, and you’ll need to regroup and reconsider your journey as you go along. So instead of being surprised when you have to make new decisions, anticipate them, and dare I say it, be excited for them.

5. Leave Your Comfort Zone

Try new things and widen your horizons. Try something you’ve always wanted to but never got around to, something that scares you, something that is very different from what you normally do.

Can Sar
Maybe you don’t know what you want to do because you haven’t tried what you’re meant to do yet. And you won’t know if that is true or not until you get out there and start ruling things out.

Seriously, it’s easy to get into a rut and feel like you have no options besides what you are you doing right now. However, by taking a step outside your comfort zone, you’d be surprised by how much you end up liking something that you never, in a million years, imagined you would.

6. Be Okay With Failing

Learn the skills that are needed to accomplish what you want to achieve. Most of us fail in [our] first attempt. We keep failing and learning and growing. [The] point to be noted is that this is the time to learn, experiment, grow, and fail without any substantial damage.

Anuj Kumar
Nothing will slow you down more in your quest to figure out what to do with your life more than being afraid of failure. Yes, you’ve heard this before—but that’s because it’s true. You won’t ever be able to nail down what makes you happy if you rule everything out because it sounds hard.

7. Enjoy Not Knowing

Enjoy the meanderings, the soul-searching, the loves lost, the time wasted. All of it will add up to a complex and very unique “you.” The more you appreciate right now, the more the future will become a fantastic reality. Don’t pressure yourself to be in the future.

James Altucher
You know how math problems always seem impossible when you first look at them, but then, after taking a break, the answer feels so obvious? Figuring out what you want to do with your life is kind of like that.

By focusing on other less-pressing matters, the obvious answer may just come to you when you’re least expecting it—and it will be clearer than you ever imagined it to be.

Feel better about not knowing what you want to do with your life? A little? Just remember that you don’t have to have it all figured out. And that even when you do, you might change course a few times. So don’t worry about having all the answers—just thinking about it is a good start.

see full:themuse.com

7 Ways to Find the Answer to “What Should I Do With My Life?”

Jack Ma, the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba, became the richest man in China after AlibabaIPO’d for a record $25 billion last September.

But Ma was just as happy — perhaps even happier — when he was barely making any money right out of college.

After graduating in 1988, Ma worked as an English teacher at a local university in his hometown of Hangzhou, China. He only made $12 a month, according to the documentary about his life called “Crocodile in the Yangtze.”

When speaking at a luncheon with the Economics Club of New York on Tuesday, Ma referred to this period as the “best life I had.”

When you don’t have much money, you know how to spend it, Ma explained. But once you become a billionaire, you have a lot of responsibility.

Ma says he feels a need to spend his money “on behalf of the society.”

This isn’t the first time Ma has spoken about the burden of being a billionaire. When speaking at a panel at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, he referred to his days as an English teacher as “fantastic,” according toCNN Money. He said anyone with $1 million is “lucky,” but when you reach $10 million, “you’ve got troubles.”

After Alibaba’s IPO, he toldCNBCthatthe pressure that comes with the responsibility gets to him, especially now that the world is focusing on Alibaba’s stock price.