You may have several aspirations as a small business owner. You may just want to stay small and lean, at the helm of a company that promotes your way of life and nothing more. Or you may be on a mission to bring your company to a major player in your space from a small business.

Everyone, however, needs a little inspiration and guidance, and who better than the people who have achieved a huge success in the business world? It is not that they have achieved the heights of success that makes them the perfect role-model. It’s because they’ve overcome tremendous difficulties and failures to reach where they are right now.

As a small business owner, you will build the product, brand your business and find new ways of growing throughout your time despite ups and downs. Wherever you are, you can use these tips from successful entrepreneurs to make necessary adjustments in your planning and take inspiration to advance and make a success of your business.

Steve Jobs (Co-founder of Apple Inc)

“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.”

If you ask someone to tell you what matters when they say, “Apple,” they will probably say something in the “Great Design.” It’s true that the products of Apple look good, but if it were all, the company would never have gotten there today. The fact is, the products of Apple work better than the competition. Your small company should follow the recommendations of Jobs here: Whatever you do, the experience of your client must be intuitive and even pleasant if you are willing to distinguish itself.

 Peter Thiel (Co-founder of PayPal)

“Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition.”

Peter Thiel, one of Silicon Valley’s most successful entrepreneurs and investors, knows quite a bit about how a company can begin and grow. Whatever your small business does, your product or service must be sure that a real problem is solved. You can’t start a company and try to build it. As Thiel notes, what you build doesn’t matter to your customers, they care how you better relieve pain than anyone else. If you can’t, you will have to compete in price with your competitors, which will certainly lead you to the downhill race.

Marc Andreessen (Co-founder of Mosaic, Netscape, Ning)

“These days, you have the option of staying home, blogging in your underwear and not having your words mangled. I think I like the direction things are headed.”

Marc Andreessen is an engineer and entrepreneur who led many of the major web startups. He is in a perfect position to see how the business environment has changed in recent years with the development of different Internet technology. But this trend did not only affect large companies and technology companies–but it also affected small companies.

It was once said that the local paper or magazine had to fight for small business leaders. This is no longer the case, as Andreessen said so eloquently. You can now control your message completely and talk directly to your customers and the public. Profit from free tools such as social media and blogs and websites which are easy to create and use to interact with your fans.

 Jack Ma (Co-founder of Alibaba Group)

“My philosophy is to repair the roof while it is still sunshine. When the company is good, change the company. When the company is in trouble, be careful, don’t move. If the storm comes, you don’t go up and repair the roof – you’ll be destroyed.”

Many small business owners tend to stand firm when things go well and panic when disasters strike. But as Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, the Chinese mass e-commerce site, has said, that is just the contrary. Don’t wait until the storm hits the company. If you get too comfortable, it’s time for a project that will improve your business and prepare you for the vagaries of the market.

Jack Welch (former chairman and CEO of General Electric)

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

Welch grew by about 4,000 per cent in his tenure as CEO of General Electric and much of it was because of his ability to think like an entrepreneur.

Specifically, Welch had the vision to transform GE from a slow-moving bureaucracy in a nimble way that could seek new vertical opportunities–similar to a businessman. Although Welch’s attitude and vision for the company were sometimes maligned by his views, every part of the business was permeating.

You can have the same impact as the leader of your small business. It is up to you to decide what you want, to communicate it to each individual worker and to be the motor behind all you do. Nobody will care so much as you can about your business, so it’s up to you to be the driving force behind everything you do.

 Reid Hoffman (Co-founder of LinkedIn)

“An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.”

In this quotation, Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s investor, and co-founder point out that the pursuit of the unknown determines entrepreneurs. They’re starting with a concept and jumping into the unknown as they’re trying to build it.

With your little company, you can do the same. You may not break completely new ground in the creation of a whole new industry, but if you do, you will try to solve a problem or improve something that nobody else does. There’s not always a plan to follow–when you’re falling to the ground, you have to build your own plane.

 James Altucher (American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, bestselling author, venture capitalist and podcaster)

“Don’t buy into the 20-hours-a-day entrepreneur myth. You need to sleep 8 hours a day to have a focused mind.”

As a former manager of hedge funds and a current entrepreneur/author, surprisingly James Altucher was able to find so much time to sleep. It’s true, however, and you ought to do the same.

A successful small company requires more than raw passion. It requires clear thought and the ability to decide rationally. Failure to keep your mind-focused and performing at a high level every day will definitely make it harder for you.

Conclusion

As a startup, you can use these tips from successful entrepreneurs in overcoming obstacles and take a lead step in turning your business into a success story. Many small businesses fail, but when one looks at these entrepreneurs who have built a company from a scratch should serve as an example for new businesses who are struggling to breathe life into their venture.