You wake up and create a to-do list. You move along with your day as usual. Then at night before bed, you take a look at your to-do list—and discover you’ve barely marked off any tasks. You’re left wracking your brain, wondering why you didn’t produce a lot of good work today.
Sound familiar? If so, the answer to your problem isn’t that you don’t have a plan. You planned to complete the tasks on your to-do list. But you didn’t prepare to accomplish them.
In the real world, business success relies on actual preparedness—not just a wish or a plan. People don’t just wake up and magically become successful because it was on their to-do list. They work hard and prepare for success! Check out why thorough preparation is the key to business success, and stay inspired with 50 motivational preparation quotes.
Why Thorough Preparation is Key to Business Success
To achieve long-term business goals, you need a detailed plan. However, even with a plan in place, unexpected events can still happen. Your car can break down on the way to a job interview. Your child or spouse can become sick. You just can’t plan for some things in life.
When it comes to business success, many elements are out of your control—from the people you meet to the challenges life brings. You simply can’t plan for the unexpected—so you must prepare instead.
Preparation means you have a growth mindset, remain flexible in the face of stress and focus on honing your skills. It means you keep multiple plans up your sleeve. So, if Plan A gets thrown out the window, you still have Plan B as your escape route. Thorough preparation gets you ready to handle whatever life throws at you.
When preparation meets opportunity, amazing things can happen.
50 Inspirational Quotes About Being Prepared
A prepared mind is just as essential as planning. Proper preparation prevents poor performance and disappointment. So, instead of wondering why life hasn’t been going to plan, create your own luck with thorough preparation. Consider these motivational quotes to power your hard work and turn your lukewarm plans into fully completed goals.
1. “The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today’s work superbly well.” — William Osler
2. “He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
3. “Anything is possible when you have a path, a plan, and a desire to take action.” — Dean Graziosi
4. “Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation, there is sure to be failure.” — Confucius
5. “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” — Benjamin Franklin
6. “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” — Alexander Graham Bell
7. “Prepare while others are daydreaming.” — William Arthur Ward
8. “You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.” — Zig Ziglar
9. “Intuition is given only to him who has undergone long preparation to receive it.” — Louis Pasteur
10. “Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.” — Lucius Annaeus Seneca
11. “Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
12. “If plan A doesn’t work, the alphabet has 25 more letters—204 if you’re in Japan.” — Claire Cook
13. “The key is not the will to win… everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important.” — Bobby Knight
14. “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” — Colin Powell
15. “The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.” — Elbert Hubbard
16. “The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, and the last duty done.” — George MacDonald
17. “I never expect to lose. Even when I’m the underdog, I still prepare a victory speech.” — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
18. “I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn’t been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn’t have been lucky.” — Oprah Winfrey
19. “A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.” — Confucius
20. “What can you do today that can plant a seed for tomorrow?” — Dean Graziosi
21. “Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.” — Winston Churchill
22. “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” — Pablo Picasso
23. “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” — Thomas Edison
24. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” — Abraham Lincoln
25. “Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.” ― Fitzhugh Dodson
26. “Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.” — Robert H. Schuller
27. “Unless you have a definite, precise, clearly set goal, you are not going to realize the maximum potential that lies within you.” — Zig Ziglar
28. “The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.” — Tony Robbins
29. “Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” — Gloria Steinem
30. “Talent alone won’t make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready. The most important question is: ‘Are you ready?’” — Johnny Carson
31. “First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.” — Dale Carnegie
32. “You hit home runs not by chance, but by preparation.” — Roger Maris
33. “One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.” — Benjamin Disraeli
34. “Winning is the science of being totally prepared” — George Allen
35. “One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.” — Arthur Ashe
36. “Opportunity does not waste time with those who are unprepared.” — Idowu Koyenikan
37. “Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character.” — Alan Armstrong
38. “Organize, don’t agonize.” — Nancy Pelosi
39. “It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.” — Stephen King
40. “Stop looking or hoping for more resources in your life and rather identify places where you can become more resourceful with what you already have.” — Dean Graziosi
41. “Preparation eradicates cowardice, which we define as the failure to act in the midst of fear.” — Veronica Roth
42. “Prepare yourself in every way you can by increasing your knowledge and adding to your experience, so that you can make the most of opportunity when it occurs.” — Mario Andretti
43. “Preparation is the be-all of good trial work. Everything else – felicity of expression, improvisational brilliance – is a satellite around the sun. Thorough preparation is that sun.” — Louis Nizer
44. “In fair weather, prepare for foul.” — Thomas Fuller
45. “Instead of always looking at the past, I put myself ahead twenty years and try to look at what I need to do now in order to get there then.” — Diana Ross
46. “I believe success is preparation, because opportunity is going to knock on your door sooner or later but are you prepared to answer that?” — Omar Epps
47. “Victory is the child of preparation and determination.” — Sean Hampton
48. “I don’t really think about the degree of difficulty or the possibility of making a mistake. I just try to relax and let my preparation and training take over.” — Simone Biles
49. “I’ve always considered myself to be just average talent and what I have is a ridiculous, insane obsessiveness for practice and preparation.” — Will Smith
50. “All things are ready, if our mind be so.” — William Shakespeare
Let Preparation Quotes Fuel Your Business Success
The best possible preparation yesterday creates the best today. And the best possible preparation today creates the best tomorrow. It’s never too late to create the life you want. And it starts with being prepared. With the right preparation and hard work, you can start marking those goals off your to-do list in no time.
Did these preparation quotes inspire you?
If so, text “I’m prepared to succeed!” to 480-400-9019—your message will go straight to Dean’s personal cell phone!
