41 Motivational Quotes for When You Need Inspiration Most

41 Motivational Quotes for When You Need Inspiration Most
Sometimes you need to push yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you.

1. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. --Napoleon Hill
2. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. --Steve Jobs
3. If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on. --Sheryl Sandberg
4. Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. --Harriet Tubman
5. Challenges are what make life interesting, and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. --Joshua J. Marine
6. Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. --Les Brown
7. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. --Albert Einstein
8. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. --Alice Walker
9. If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it. --Elon Musk
10. Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart. --Indian Proverb
11. I never dreamt of success. I worked for it. --Estee Lauder
12. When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. --Helen Keller
13. I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples. --Mother Teresa
14. People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it. --George Bernard Shaw
15. If you look at what you have in life, you'll always have more. If you look at what you don't have in life, you'll never have enough. --Oprah Winfrey
16. Believe you can and you're halfway there. --Theodore Roosevelt
17. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. --Amelia Earhart
18. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. --The Dalai Lama
19. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. --Anne Frank
20. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
21. What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. --Plutarch
22. I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. --Jimmy Dean
23. Change your thoughts and you change your world. --Norman Vincent Peale
24. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. --Leonardo da Vinci
25. Eighty percent of success is showing up. --Woody Allen
26. Either you run the day, or the day runs you. --Jim Rohn
27. The best revenge is massive success. --Frank Sinatra
28. The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. --Walt Disney
29. 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
30. Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. --Babe Ruth
31. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. --Albert Einstein
32. Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see. --Confucius
33. We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone. --Ronald Reagan
34. Nothing will work unless you do. --Maya Angelou
35. Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. --Charles Swindoll
36. Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. --Arthur Ashe
37. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. --Lao Tzu
38. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained. --Marie Curie
39. To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart. --Eleanor Roosevelt
40. People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing. That's why we recommend it daily. --Zig Ziglar
41. When you look at people who are successful, you will find that they aren't the people who are motivated, but the ones who have consistency in their motivation. --Arsene Wenger

Thank you to Lolly Daskal for putting together these quotes.

7 Powerful Traits of Leaders With Emotional Intelligence

7 Powerful Traits of Leaders With Emotional Intelligence
Authenticity is often feared or ignored as a necessary soft skill. But if you master these simple practices, you're on your way to being a great boss.

1. They show up with their true selves.

What does that mean? Sometimes the tendency is to hide, withdraw, stonewall, or put on a mask. And that mask hides who we truly are; maybe through how we order people around, or how we  forcefully command  attention with a false charisma.

Authenticity is showing up with your best self. It's leading with your mind and your heart. You show up with:

•    Excellence

•    Integrity

•    Emotional honesty

•    A great attitude

•    An openness to feedback

•    A self-awareness of not only your feelings, but of those of others in your sphere of influence.

2. They treat themselves (and others) as human beings.

Great leaders display authenticity by making room daily for laughter and joy, while accepting that they're not perfect. When they make mistakes, they will admit them.

And when employees make mistakes, it's safe for them to risk being open enough to say, "Hey boss, I messed up." They can say this due to the high levels of trust built over time with those healthy bosses.

3. They approach conflict with great courage.

Authentic leaders will avoid creating distance, being silent, or stone-walling--all passive-aggressive ways to deal with conflict. They are naturally assertive and speak up when they have to.

Now, don't confuse "speaking up" with saying whatever comes to their mind. That just lacks emotional intelligence. And I'm not saying that they speak up to run over people with positional authority.

What they do is courageously run toward the eye of the storm because they know that cutting through a conflict to resolve a problem with respect, dignity, and listening to understand is easier than the negative consequences of running away from a conflict.

4. They speak their truth.

They don't say things to sugarcoat, to try to please others. Or to try to look good in front of their peers.

They don't betray themselves or others by using words or making decisions that are not aligned with who they are. 

It's highly unlikely that you will hear such a leader being talked about around water coolers on Monday morning for "throwing someone under the bus."

So these leaders speak clearly, honestly, and with integrity. That's why they usually have great reputations.

5. They are teachable.

Leaders in a healthy organization gladly accept the role of  a learner, because they know it will make them better. They know that each person has something important to teach them.

The truth is that good leaders don't always know what is needed and what to do--so they are willing to listen before making suggestions. They ask questions, and are sincerely interested in the answers.

6. They listen to understand.

I mentioned this earlier: Effective communication isn't just about talking; it is also the ability to listen and understand what's happening on the other side of the fence.

In today's virtually connected world that relies on technology rather than face-to-face interactions, it's even more important to be able to know the cues on the other side that you would normally get eyeball-to-eyeball. But it goes way beyond that.

Authentic listeners don't dominate the conversation by talking only about themselves or the task at hand.

So in meetings or one-on-ones, they listen and reflect back what they heard to clarify ("What I hear you saying is ..."), and they ask questions to probe the other person's feelings or opinions on the topic of conversation.

That can be as simple as: "Tell me how you feel about this."

Authentic listeners are careful not to talk over someone's point. That just shows impatience on their part, and it may cause the other person to lose interest in the conversation, or shut down.

7. They are accessible.

Great leaders, particularly during hard times, are out in front of the organization sharing plans for the future. They don't hide behind closed doors or conveniently delegate important communication needs to others.

Employees will look to leaders for information, clear expectations, and status of what's going on when the chips are down. Great leaders are especially adept at "walking their four corners."

In what ways do you show up with emotional presence?


Thank you to Marcel Schwantes for conducting this list.

8 Ways Smart People Use Failure to Their Advantage

8 Ways Smart People Use Failure to Their Advantage
Failure is an inevitable part of life, but smart people know how to make it work for them.

1. Break the bad news yourself. If you've made a mistake, don't cross your fingers and hope no one will notice, because someone is going to--it's inevitable. When someone else points out your failure, that one failure turns into two. If you stay quiet, people are going to wonder why you didn't say something, and they're likely to attribute this to either cowardice or ignorance.

2. Offer an explanation, but don't make excuses. Owning your mistakes can actually enhance your image. It shows confidence, accountability, and integrity. Just be sure to stick to the facts. "We lost the account because I missed the deadline" is a reason. "We lost the account because my dog was sick all weekend and that made me miss the deadline" is an excuse.

3. Have a plan for fixing things. Owning up to a mistake is one thing, but you can't end it there. What you do next is critical. Instead of standing there, waiting for someone else to clean up your mess, offer your own solutions. It's even better if you can tell your boss (or whomever) the specific steps you've already taken to get things back on track.

4. Have a plan for prevention. In addition to having a plan for fixing things, you should also have a plan for how you'll avoid making the same mistake in the future. That's the best way to reassure people that good things will come out of your failure.

5. Get back on the horse. It's important that you don't let failure make you timid. That's a mindset that sucks you in and handicaps you every time you slip up. Take enough time to absorb the lessons of your failure, and as soon as you've done that, get right back out there and try again. Waiting only prolongs bad feelings and increases the chance that you'll lose your nerve.

Your attitude when facing failure is just as important as the actions you take. Using failure to your advantage requires resilience and mental strength, both hallmarks of emotional intelligence. When you fail, there are three attitudes you want to maintain.

6. Perspective is the most important factor in handling failure. People who are skilledat rebounding after failure are more likely to blame the failure on something they did--the wrong course of action or a specific oversight--rather than something they are. People who are bad at handling failure tend to blame failure on their laziness, lack of intelligence, or some other personal quality, which implies that they had no control over the situation. That makes them more likely to avoid future risk-taking.

7. Optimism is another characteristic of people who bounce back from failure. One British study of 576 serial entrepreneurs found they were much more likely to expect success than entrepreneurs who gave up after their first failure. That sense of optimism is what keeps people from feeling like failure is a permanent condition. Instead, they tend to see each failure as a building block to their ultimate success because of the learning it provides.

8. Persistence. Optimism is a feeling of positivity; persistence is what you do with it. It's optimism in action. When everybody else says, "Enough is enough" and decides to quit and go home, persistent people shake off those failures and keep going. Persistent people are special because their optimism never dies. This makes them great at rising from failure.

Bringing It All Together

Failure is a product of your perspective. What one person considers a crushing defeat another sees as a minor setback. The beauty is that you can change how you see failure so that you can use it to better yourself.

How do you handle failure? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Thank you to Travis Bradberry for conducting this article.

Leader of the week

                                      Leader of The Week

     Every week the Cloud Gate Consulting colleagues get together and pick a person that has earned the title of "leader of the week". Leader of the week is not just given to the person with the highest sales or biggest achievements, but to a person who has been working hard and helpful around the office as well. This weeks leader of the week was awarded to Katie Walter. During Katie's recognition gathering she shared a motivational video with the rest of the colleagues. She showed a clip of a young girl from America's Got Talent. The little girl was 13 years old and was an opera singer. When she came out on stage she was shaking and frazzled.  None of the judges had faith that her voice was any good, but that did not stop her. This young girl proved not only to the judges but to herself that she could get past her fear. This video was an inspiration to everyone in the office and should be an inspiration to everyone out there. To view this video clip click on the link provided below.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCoxGV7j71c

How Well Do You Really Know Your Customer?

How Well Do You Really Know Your Customer?
You can't win in sales by sheer volume anymore. If you're not doing these 3 things to understand your customer and speak to their needs, you're practically giving money to your competition.

Step #1: Stay Focused And Clearly Define Your "Buyer Persona"

Whenever I hear someone tell me that they can't be targeted with their sales prospecting efforts because they have to send tens of thousands of emails (or more), I cringe.

Many salespeople and marketers still have the misconception that volume is the secret to driving sales.

But throwing spaghetti on the walls and praying that it will stick doesn't really work anymore. Your customers aren't stupid, and won't just go for the lowest-common-denominator option anymore. The more technology advances our options, the more we expect things to be personalized and relevant to us. Sending untargeted and irrelevant emails is insulting to customers, making them much more likely to mark you as spam, and ruin your reputation.

Instead, salespeople need to think carefully about who they are trying to start sales conversations with.

Who are the decision makers they are reaching out to? What industries do they work in? How big is their company?

Salespeople that have clearly defined "buyer personas" (ideal customer profiles) are much more effective and successful because they actually reach out to the right people to start with and don't waste their time having conversations with people who aren't qualified to buy from them.

Even if they reach out to one-tenth as many people, they'll probably still get more responses than another salesperson who is just blindly blasting out untargeted mass emails.

Step #2: Understand Your Audience Through Research

Who is your buyer? What do they care about?

What stresses them out and keeps them up late on a Tuesday night? What are their goals for this quarter? What tools and software are they already using, and what are they not using? How do they talk with their colleagues, and what do they talk about most?

You need to ask yourself all these questions, and more, if you want to get inside your customer's head to peek their interest and anticipate potential objections.

How do you learn this information, though?

Talking to people in your audience is helpful, but online research can be powerful too. I like to start by taking a handful of contacts from my buyer persona, and researching them on Linkedin and other social channels like Twitter, if they use them.

I want to know their biggest pain points and goals, and try to understand what their role is like right now. I also pay close attention to what tone they use in their profiles or content they share, and look for keywords and concepts that I can use in my emails.

Step #3: Always Write Your Emails For One Person

Whether you're writing an email to a single individual or creating a template to send to hundreds or thousands of people, you should always write as if you're sending it to one person.

This old copywriting trick is one of my secrets to making my sales emails always sound personalized, even if they're completely mass.

Look at an email or chat message you sent to a friend or relative, and then look at a marketing promotion in your inbox.

Read both of those messages out loud.

You'll probably notice that the message to your loved one sounds a lot more casual and uses first person ("I," "us," and "we") and second person ("you" or "your") a lot more than the marketing email.

For some reason, marketing and sales people tend to change their tone as soon as they're writing a work email, especially when it's a template.

Don't do this. It makes your message feel impersonal, and it's a dead giveaway to the reader that it's probably mass.

Instead, pick someone from your audience or buyer persona and write your email as if you were writing to them. If you're creating a template you can just remove their name and company name, and replace it with <<First>> and <<Company>>, or some other encoding that would allow you to send a mass email.

After you're done, read your email aloud to yourself and listen to how it sounds. Try to remove any jargon or language that wouldn't normally be in an email that you would send to a friend or coworker.

And if you don't do these three steps, someone might just put you on our "Cold Email Hall of Shame."

Who is your buyer? What do they care about?

What stresses them out and keeps them up late on a Tuesday night? What are their goals for this quarter? What tools and software are they already using, and what are they not using? How do they talk with their colleagues, and what do they talk about most?

You need to ask yourself all these questions, and more, if you want to get inside your customer's head to peek their interest and anticipate potential objections.

How do you learn this information, though?

Talking to people in your audience is helpful, but online research can be powerful too. I like to start by taking a handful of contacts from my buyer persona, and researching them on Linkedin and other social channels like Twitter, if they use them.

I want to know their biggest pain points and goals, and try to understand what their role is like right now. I also pay close attention to what tone they use in their profiles or content they share, and look for keywords and concepts that I can use in my emails.

Thank you to Heather Morgan for conducting this article.

5 Reasons Customer Retention Should Be a Priority for Your Business

5 Reasons Customer Retention Should Be a Priority for Your Business
Instead of focusing so intently on getting new customers, try devising strategies to keep your existing ones instead.

1. Gather Information From Customers

You can only retain customers if you know what they want. Unfortunately, many businesses rely on assumptions instead of facts. You can't assume you know what your customers want from your business. If you haven't researched or asked, then you really don't know.

By studying your customers and understanding what they like and don't like, you can produce much better results. Study on-site user experiences, repeat purchase behaviors, customer service response rates and other relevant data. You'll learn a lot about how your customers feel about your company. On WPBeginner, we do an annual survey asking users what they'd like us to add in the following year along with giving us feedback on what we can improve. This usually results in us significantly improving our processes as well as launching new features/products.

2. Show Customers Your Appreciation

Customers want to feel appreciated. This will look different for every business, but make sure you're taking care of customers after the sale. This could involve personal follow-up services, discounts and deals, complimentary support, personal greetings or anything in between. You shouldn't overstep your boundaries, but most customers will appreciate genuine expressions of gratitude.

At OptinMonster, we do routine follow-ups which often turn into positive testimonials/case studies. They're great for social proof.

3. Overhaul Customer Service Approach

The classic customer service model involves responding to issues as customers present them. Unfortunately, customers have grown to expect more. What you really need is an anticipatory service. The proactive approach to customer service allows you to eliminate problems before they happen, as opposed to waiting for them to occur.

One example of an anticipatory service is an airline sending out a text to customers warning them that a flight is delayed by two hours. Since nobody likes to arrive at the airport earlier than necessary, this proactive service reduces frustration and shows ownership. When it comes to your organization, be on the lookout for problems you could prevent. And if you can't prevent a certain problem, find a way to reduce the frustration associated with the issue.

4. Rebound from Inevitable Mistakes

Your business will make mistakes--there's no way around it. Sometimes these mistakes are trivial while at other times they can cause serious reverberations. The key to success lies in how you rebound. Do you walk away and pretend like nothing happened? Or, do you take ownership of the issue and go above and beyond the call to resolve the problem and keep the customer satisfied? The latter will cost you more time and effort, but it'll also keep employees and customers more content.

5. Become a Trusted Advisor

You need to realize why your customers come to you. They aren't looking to buy a product or service. They're actually looking to accomplish a goal. Your product or service is merely a tool that allows them to do this. So, instead of focusing your attention on the product, think about the customer's goal and how you can help them.

"You must understand and appreciate exactly what your clients need when they do business with you--even if they are unable to articulate that exact result themselves," says successful business consultant Jay Abraham. "Once you know what final outcome they need, you lead them to that outcome--you become a trusted adviser who protects them. And they have reason to remain your client for a lifetime."

Becoming a trusted advisor requires constant outreach, a commitment to high-touch relationships, and an investment in educational material that can be accessed and shared at any time.

You and your team work hard to gain new customers. Don't waste all that effort. Start investing in making customer retention a top priority for your business.


Thank you to Young Entrepreneur Council for conducting this article.

4 Characteristics Great Business Leaders Embrace

4 Characteristics Great Business Leaders Embrace
How Leaders' Attitudes and Behaviors Make or Break Company Culture

Integrity

You might think of integrity as simply being honest and fair (that's pretty textbook as far as definitions go). But most standard definitions include a second definition of "the state of being complete or whole." And I find the second piece more profound.

Why does being whole and complete matter so much? Well, as Rebekah Campbell so eloquently wrote, "...telling lies is the No. 1 reason entrepreneurs fail. Not because telling lies makes you a bad person but because the act of lying plucks you from the present, preventing you from facing what is really going on in your world. Every time you overreport a metric, underreport a cost, are less than honest with a client or a member of your team, you create a false reality and you start living in it." When you commit to being wholly and completely honest, you can operate in the whole and complete reality.

As it currently stands, many business leaders don't have a great reputation for integrity; only half of the general population trust business leaders and CEOs to tell the truth. And when employees don't expect to be told the truth, it's much easier to justify fudging their own numbers and statements. Establish a precedent of integrity now by being completely honest and facing reality head on, and you'll set that same expectation for employees. The payoff is a thriving culture based on trust where you can address real challenges with real solutions. Plus, it's liberating not to have to keep all your half-truths or bold-faced lies straight. If you commit to always telling the truth, it's easy to remember what you need to say to whom.  

Empathy

I've found that so much of successfully leading a company is about relationships. And to maintain those relationships, I have to think a lot about how my actions impact employees' lives and make employees feel. I do this not only because I care about my employees, but because I know that if they're treated with empathy and consideration, they'll be more likely to treat our customers and their coworkers the same way. If you want employees to be considerate and understanding of customer and coworker feelings, you need to demonstrate similar empathy toward those employees.

Having empathy toward employees often nudges leaders toward servant leadership--a management style where leaders do everything they can to help and serve employees. When you have empathy, you consider how employees are feeling and anticipate what they need, and when you are a servant leaders, you get to work serving employees based on their feelings and needs. Not only will you benefit from employees adopting your servant leadership or empathetic leadership style, but you'll also benefit from improved customer service, increased job performance (by 6 percent) and higher employee retention (by 50 percent!).

And beyond those benefits, it's simply the right thing to do. Work is a much better place to be when everyone is treating everyone else humanely and empathetically. If you want a positive culture where employees treat customers and coworkers with care, try walking a mile in their shoes. (But make sure to give their shoes back. Stealing shoes isn't cool.)

Accountability

How do your leaders handle mistakes? Hide them? Blame someone else? Or have you established a culture where they can openly admit and learn from them? This is the key difference between an organization where employees safely embrace or avoid accountability. If leaders want employees to be comfortable with accountability, they need to openly hold themselves and others accountable--in the right way.

Hold yourself accountable by openly admitting when you're wrong. At BambooHR, we understand that mistakes happen and can be learning opportunities. If a big mistake is made, employees hold themselves accountable by sending an "Oops Email" to the team detailing what went wrong and what was learned. The employee isn't criticized (coworkers often chime in with support and stories of their own mistakes), and everyone learns that accountability is revered, not reviled.

Hold others accountable and expect, especially as a leader, that employees will also hold you accountable. So, for example, employees hold me accountable to tell them if they have leftover lunch stuck in their teeth, and they're all accountable for letting me know when I do. (I jokingly implemented this accountability rule after attending a meeting with broccoli in my teeth.) And a more-professional smile isn't the only accountability benefit. Studies show holding people accountable improves performance, feelings of competency, creativity, and satisfaction.

Accountability can be uncomfortable because work hasn't traditionally been a safe place to make mistakes. When you hold yourself and others responsible, you set an example and create a culture where employees feel safe owning and learning from their own mistakes.

Humility

Most of us have dealt with the boss, or coworker, who knows everything (or thinks they do, anyway). And it's not simply that they don't listen to feedback. The issue is when they refuse to see the truth, accept it, and change when needed--even when it's hard. I'm grateful to have learned from those know-it-all bosses and coworkers. Thanks to them, I understand that I don't know everything and, instead, surround myself with incredibly intelligent people who will tell me when I'm wrong, and we both expect that honesty to happen without holding back. We're not perfect at it, but we do always try to get better because in order to succeed, leaders and teams need to learn from each other continually.

Encourage employees to challenge your ideas. (I'm always grateful when an employee stops me from pursuing a terrible idea.) Even consider privately inviting an employee to give you public feedback, just so others see that it's acceptable and expected. When employees see that you're open to learning from them, they'll be more likely to learn from others, too.

Lazlo Bock, Google's SVP of People Operations, said it well: "Your end goal is what can we do together to problem-solve. Without humility, you are unable to learn." Humility allows everyone on your team to clear pride and concerns of self-preservation from their mind and, instead, focus on the best outcome for customers, the company, and themselves. (Not to mention the higher commitment and performance humble leaders get from employees.)

"There are no moral shortcuts in the game of business or life," Jon Huntsman, Sr. wrote in his book "Winners Never Cheat." "There are, basically, three kinds of people, the unsuccessful, the temporarily successful, and those who become and remain successful. The difference is character." I believe it. To succeed--and for other leaders, employees, and, ultimately the organization as a whole to succeed--you can't take any moral shortcuts. If you and other leaders in your company embrace characteristics of integrity, empathy, accountability, and humility, most employees will follow suit, and you'll end up with a rich and rewarding company culture.

Thank you to Ben Peterson for taking the time to compile this list.