Lots of readers seemed to enjoy my previous article discussing 10 inspirational sports quotes in relation to entrepreneurship. As the article mentions, I decided to write it after encountering a list of 100 famous sports quotes. More importantly, I wasn’t particularly picky about which quotes I chose. Instead, the vast majority of sports quotes on the list could just as easily have been used to describe entrepreneurship.
In that spirit, since the first list was such a big hit, and since, as Billie Jean King once said, “Champions keep playing until they get it right,” I’m sharing a second list!
Here are another 10 inspirational sports quotes that will (hopefully) inspire you to be a better entrepreneur:
“I really think a champion is defined not by their wins, but how they can recover when they fall.”
— Serena Williams
It’s easy to succeed when everything is going right. Unfortunately, in entrepreneurship, everything is rarely going right. That’s why entrepreneurs, like athletes, aren’t defined by how great they are in the good times. They’re defined by how great they are in the most difficult times.
“I don’t want to be the next Michael Jordan, I only want to be Kobe Bryant.”
— Kobe Bryant
Startups are always getting compared with the companies that came before them. It’s “Uber for Pets.” It’s “the next Amazon.” It’s “got the quality of Apple, only at half the price.”
While I understand and appreciate how comparing startups to existing companies helps consumers contextualize what kinds of services the startups provide, entrepreneurs should never worry about how their businesses compare with others. The best entrepreneurs stay focused on what they’re building, and they don’t worry about how they might look in relation to something/someone else.