Business Struggles Quotes

My first venture was to trade bicycle parts and hosiery yarn. The initial days proved to be difficult, and I earned very little from my business. But I kept at it. Each day, when I retired for the night, I told myself that money would come in the next day.

Running a real business is exacting, daunting, repetitive work. Even in Silicon Valley.

Every business will face tough times.

In the beginning I just wanted to survive. For the first three years, we made zero revenue. I remember many times when I was trying to pay up, the restaurant owner would say, 'Your bill was paid.' And there would be a note saying, 'Mr. Ma, I'm your customer on the Alibaba platform. I made a lot of money, and I know you don't, so I paid the bill.'

Running a business anywhere isn't easy.

I'm just going to try to stay employed. That's the tough part in this business.

The year 2013 has been very difficult, with a lot of headwinds in almost every region and every business.

Anybody who has ever been in business, anybody who has ever paid bills, anybody who has ever lived in a serious adult life knows that indebtedness is a killer.

I started my blog back in 2009 because every Internet business and marketing seminar I watched at the time told me I had to. I had been trying to get a business started selling dating and life advice and was struggling.

Yes, I would say I had quite a rough time from 1992 to 1996. After the highs of the Eighties, work became slow from around 1987 to around 1997. I was running a small recording studio in Shepherd's Bush but wasn't making a great deal from it.

Being an entrepreneur isn't easy, but it's even harder for minority and women-led companies.

Dealing with business and trying to create never mixes for me.

It's tough to live in New York and be in the business.

I like the way [Marcus Lemonis] thinks. He's made me think about things in a different way. He's made me want to support small businesses in a very real way, seeing what these small-business owners go through and the struggle it is and the courage it takes to put your heart and money behind things at a 24-hour job. I think I relate to that as an actress and a writer and someone who works freelance, in many ways. It never ends, you never clock out. You've always got to keep things moving.

I felt quite an affinity with 'Rocky' in my career. It's been like 'fight the business' all the way up.

I don't understand small businesses, only big ones. Marriage is the hardest small business.

When I first came to Playboy, I thought I would go on and do something else in a few years. But when the company got into trouble with political and regulatory challenges, I felt that I could really lead the turn around.

I don't know a startup that hasn't been through tough times.

The business was in a very difficult state when I first took over the company. I walked into a situation where cheques were getting written, popped in drawers, so that when people phoned up, they could honestly say, 'Look, we've signed the cheque. You'll get it ultimately.'

By March '87 we're down to seven thousand, by the end of the year we're down to twelve hundred. The whole bottom just fell out of the market. It was bad for me because I was in Australia at the time.

I used to sell furniture for a living. The trouble was, it was my own.

People don't know how hard it is to have your own business.

I think when companies are struggling, they don't want to talk to the press. The guys who write business books aren't interested in it because nobody wants to learn what it's like to be a mess, you want to learn how to be successful. That's slanted the whole thing quite a bit.

There's nothing easy about building a company at all. I find it really hard, just painful and difficult, and if you are successful, it's even worse than if you fail.

The problem with the Internet startup craze isn't that too many people are starting companies; it's that too many people aren't sticking with it. That's somewhat understandable, because there are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That's when you find out who you are and what your values are.