Peter Drucker quotes prove he is the most enduring marketing guru of them all. His quotes and their wisdom are as relevant and applicable today as they were decades earlier when he first said them.

Peter Drucker (1909-2005) was the author of more than three dozen books, translated into almost as many languages. McKinsey Quarterly said: “In the world of management gurus, there is no debate. Peter Drucker is the one guru to whom other gurus kowtow.”

Drucker thought of himself as a loner, as someone well outside the mainstream of management education. “I have always been a loner,” he said once. “I work best outside. That’s where I’m most effective.” While he may thought himself as being on the outside, his succinct truths strike right at the heart of the matter and provide essential direction for today’s marketers and entrepreneurs.

Here are 12 Peter Drucker quotes on marketing and entrepreneurship to inspire and provide direction for you.

MARKETING

Drucker saw marketing as a core responsibility of management. He said that “marketing is so basic that it is not just
enough to have a strong sales department and to entrust marketing to it. Marketing is not only much
broader than selling; it is not a specialized activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. Concern and
responsibility for marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise.”

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Drucker identified entrepreneurs as people who see “change” as the standard. “The only constant in life is change.”
He treated both innovation and entrepreneurship in the “new entrepreneurial economy” as practices, decisive duties that could be controlled best in a systematic work environment. Unfortunately for corporate America, the bureaucratic organization structure was not able to sustain an entrepreneurial spirit, and many of the proponents left to start their own ventures.

Do these Peter Drucker quotes on marketing and entrepreneurship inspire and provide direction for you? Are you ready to put them into practice?

The best way to predict the future is to create it. – Peter Drucker

By creating your future, you are an active player in the events as they unfold. By knowing what you want, and what you are willing to do to get there, you can help to shape what the future holds.

If it helps to hear from practitioners, here are 7 stories on how the best way to predict the future is to create it.

1. ACTIVELY LOOK FOR NEW TRENDS: After operating a small chain of convenience stores in southern California, Joe Coulombe had an idea: that upwardly mobile college grads might want something better than 7-11. So he opened a tropical-themed market in Pasadena, stocked it with good wine and beer, hired good people, and paid them well. He added more locations near universities, then healthy foods, and Trader Joe’s got started. As Peter Drucker says, “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.”
2. UNLOCK POTENTIAL THROUGH EMPOWERMENT: Ross Smith was a leader at Microsoft trying to keep his team of 80+ employees motivated and focused. So, he let them become “free-agents.” They could choose one of four teams to work for. The leaders of each team could not offer more money to the “free-agents” but could offer new development opportunities and different types of work. When the process was complete, 95% of the staff preferred the new process. As Peter Drucker mentions “most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done”.
3. LOVE WHAT YOU DO: Phil Robertson so loved duck hunting that he chose that over playing pro football for the NFL. He invented a duck call, started a company called Duck Commander, eventually put his son Willy in charge, and spawned a media and merchandising empire for a family of rednecks known as Duck Dynasty.
4. EXPERIMENT, EXPERIMENT, EXPERIMENT: According to Natalie Goldberg in her book, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing your Inner Writer, one of the key pillars of being a good writer is that you just get out there and write. Just write. Experiment. Write about what you had for lunch, write about your friend’s new silver plated bracelet, and write about how you think your parents met. This experimentation is crucial to the success of today’s managers and is particularly important in these times of change.
5. FIND YOUR AUTHENTIC VOICE: Author Todd Henry in his book, Louder than Word, Harness the Power of your Authentic Voice, says: While it’s important to turn your thoughts inward and reflect on what’s important to you, that’s only the beginning of the process of developing your voice. It’s also essential to turn your attention outward to determine the type of impact you want your voice to have on those you serve. While you may never know exactly where your work will lead you, a guiding vision will help you make crucial decisions and invest yourself in ways that matter.
6. DEAL WITH SETBACKS: Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, says: “When you reach an obstacle, turn it into an opportunity. You have the choice. You can overcome and be a winner, or you can allow it to overcome you and be a loser. The choice is yours and yours alone. Refuse to throw in the towel. Go the extra mile that failures refuse to travel. It is far better to be exhausted from success than to be rested from failure.”
7. ACT. LEARN. BUILD. REPEAT: Based on the research of Saras D. Sarasvathy, of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. And similar work by others at Babson College, this approach is a time-tested process for dealing with the unknown. Put simply, in the face of an unknown future, act. Deal with uncertainty not by trying to analyze it, or planning for every contingency, or predicting what the outcomes will be. Instead, act, learn from what you find, and act again.

Do these stories help you to see how the best way to predict the future. Are you ready to take the first step in creating your future?

• Over 50% of the working population works in a small business
• 52% of small businesses are home-based
• Small businesses have generated 65% of net new jobs since 1995 (source: Forbes)

Starting a business is a challenging endeavor and achieving entrepreneurial success a great accomplishment.

Success for a startup usually occurs because the business fills an unmet need or creates an innovation in an industry that is under served.

But in all cases, there are significant obstacles, big sacrifices and nothing occurs without the individuals who have the ideas and perseverance to make them happen.

To celebrate the companies and individuals that have made this journey, here are 10 inspiring small business stories that achieved big things.

1. 505-JUNK: After seeing a used trailer for sale on the side of the road one day, Barry Hartman and Scott Foran decided to look into the world of junk removal. While not a completely new idea for a business, they realized that they could diversify their business in two ways: The first to charge by weight of material removed and the second to recycle as much of that junk as possible. Barry and Scott wrote their business plan and presented it to Futurpreneur for financing. They were approved, and with the money, purchased their pickup truck and trailer and started the business in the basement of Barry’s parents’ home. Today, 505-Junk has been voted Best Junk Removal Company by Homestars.com, the online directory for renovators, repairman and retailers.
2. ADAFRUIT INDUSTRIES: Limor Fried, who earned her master’s in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, runs Adafruit Industries, which sells do-it-yourself electronics kits. She welcomed people to use the information, and saw it as a way to foster innovation. Fried launched her company in 2005 with $10,000 that was supposed to go to her tuition. Anytime she made a profit, she made a tuition payment. Today, the company ships 150 to 200 orders a day, some of them worth thousands of dollars.
3. APP EMPIRE: Chad Mureta was running a real estate business when a devastating car accident left him hospital-bound. Mureta decided to try his hand at producing mobile applications. At the time, the industry was relatively new, but he felt the growth potential was worth the risk. Mureta took out a loan for $1,800 to produce his first app, Fingerprint Security – Pro. It soon became one of the 50 most popular apps in the App Store, earning him $140,000 in the process. From there, Mureta founded and sold three app companies — Empire Apps, Best Apps and T3 Apps. He has produced 46 apps to date.
4. CHARITY: WATER: When Scott Harrison was 28, he realized he was a “selfish scumbag” while on vacation in Uruguay. So Harrison founded Charity: water, which brings clean drinking water to developing nations. Charity: water has funded 3,962 water projects, providing access to clean, safe drinking water for 1,794,983 people in 19 countries.
5. GAS BUDDY: Jason Toews and Dustin Coupal saw a need for a site to help people locate the cheapest local gas prices and founded GasBuddy.com in June 2000. The partners nurtured the website over the course of the next decade, persuading drivers to log in and share gas prices. Then, in 2009, they realized the potential of mobile apps. So the company launched Android and iPhone apps later that year, which were instantly popular. 6,000,000+ people have downloaded the apps with more visiting the website.
6. OAK STREET SHOES: John Vlagos, a Greek immigrant living in Chicago, wanted to show his son George how hard it is to work with your hands for a living and hopefully choose another line of work for himself. He was a cobbler so he made young George come into his shop every weekend to shine shoes. The plan backfired as George Vlagos is now a cobbler as well. George is a bit more than that though – he is one of the most successful independent shoemakers in America. He saw an opening in the market for top quality shoes made with traditional materials that could be bought at an affordable price. George Vlagos’s shoes, known as Oak Street Shoes, are sold in some shops but he mostly sells them online. He regularly has to operate with a six-week waiting list.
7. SPANX:  Sara Blakely was getting ready for a party when she realized she didn’t have the right undergarment to provide a smooth look under white pants. Armed with scissors and sheer genius, she cut the feet off her control top pantyhose and the Spanx revolution began! With a focus on solving wardrobe woes, the Spanx brand has grown to offer bras, underwear, jeans, pants, active and more. She obtained her own patent, set up her company and started pitching her idea. She was repeatedly turned down until she got the buyer from Neiman Marcus to try on Spanx. She got an order and other retailers started to follow suit. And then came a mention on Oprah. Blakely is the world’s youngest self-made billionaire and in 2012, when she was just 41, Blakely made it on to the list of the top 100 most influential people in the world, as determined by Time Magazine.
8. TASTY: Liane Weintraub, a local Los Angeles TV reporter and Shannan Swanson, a Cordon Bleu-trained chef and former cook at one of Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants thought, given the current obsession with label reading and organic ingredients, there must be dozens of organic baby food brands. But they were wrong. The pair started making organic purees for their own babies and couldn’t believe how few options were available in stores. Today, Tasty Brand is carried at Whole Foods, Fairway, Tops, and other chains. The company turned a profit four years after its founding, and it’s on track for sales of $2.5 million this year.
9. USEFUL CHARTS: When starting his business, Matthew Baker initially sold small laminated study guides. But he quickly noticed that what people wanted was posters. He discovered that there was a real need for visual-learning material. His chart-based posters now help students, teachers and home schoolers the world over. His Timeline of World History poster is especially popular, and has on several occasions reached Amazon.com’s Top 500 items.
10. ZANE’S CYCLES: Chris Zane, 46, got his start at age 12 fixing bikes in his parents’ East Haven, Connecticut, garage. At 16, he persuaded his parents to let him take over the lease of a bike shop going out of business, borrowing $23,000 from his grandfather at 15 percent interest. His mother tended the store while he was at school in the mornings. In his first year, he racked up $56,000 in sales. Now, Zane’s Cycles has annual revenue over $21 million.

As a small business ourselves, we’re inspired by these stories. We started Barnraisers, a full-service digital marketing agency, with the belief that what companies want is to be guided by data-driven results to help them achieve greater levels of success. We’re glad to have taken a similar journey to these inspiring entrepreneurs and to be able to help those starting out.

Do these small business stories inspire you? Are you motivated by the entrepreneurial spirit of the people who started them?

What makes some of us want to create something new and build a business instead of joining one that is already established?

Conclusions are no one is born an entrepreneur and no formal study turns you into one. Instead, an entrepreneur is made through a journey; one beset with obstacles before opportunities where a spirit raises to the occasion. Maybe that’s why many say the most distinguishing asset of entrepreneurs is their entrepreneurial spirit.

To guide, get through the hard times and help you get there, here are 44 obstacles entrepreneurs overcome.

1. Know how to take advantage of an unfair advantage – Forbes
2. Vision and dissatisfaction with the present – Forbes
3. Ability to get people on board and add to that vision – Forbes
4. Flexibility to adapt, openness to feedback and the ability to learn – Forbes
5. Persistence and execution – Forbes
6. Start small with the means that are closest at hand – Harvard Business Review
7. Find ways to reach the market with a minimum of resources such as time, effort and money – HBR
8. Take a product to the nearest potential customer even before it’s built – HBR
9. Plans that are made and unmade and revised and recast through interaction with others – HBR
10. Landmarks that point to a discernible path – HBR
11. Know that surprises are not deviations from that path – HBR
12. Believe the future is out there to be discovered – HBR
13. Obtain pre-commitments from key stakeholders – HBR
14. Because the market in unpredictable, it has the opportunity to be shaped by their actions and decisions in conjunction with stakeholder and customer-partners – HBR
15. Are not waiting for jobs and incentives and come to them – HBR
16. Don’t wait for the right people to come along – HBR
17. Have a process – Inc.
18. Trust their gut – Inc.
19. Have got something to prove – Inc.
20. Have had someone in their lives who paid attention to their skills and it made a difference – Wall Street Journal
21. Spend time asking provocative questions – WSJ
22. Observe the world like anthropologists – WSJ
23. Network with people who don’t think, act or talk like them – WSJ
24. Have a burning desire to build a great company – pandodaily
25. Focus on things like user experience ahead of monetization – pandodaily
26. Create a culture where it’s fun to come to work – pandodaily
27. Know there is a better solution to a problem than how everyone is solving it right now – Vijay Anand
28. Seek out, acquire, practice the skills they need to succeed and do what they have to get to where they want to be.- George Torok
29. Have a much higher level of trust toward their society, their peers, colleagues, subordinates, and employees – Cipe
30. Have a low fear of failure – OpenLearn 
31. Begin with who they are, what they know and whom they know, and immediately start taking action and interacting with other people – Darden Business Publishing
32. Focus on what they can do and do it, without worrying much about what they ought to do – Darden
33. Creating something new with existing means – Darden
34. Committing in advance to what one is willing to lose rather than investing in calculations about expected returns to the project – Darden
35. Are willing to make actual commitments to the project, without worrying about opportunity costs, or carrying out elaborate competitive analyses – Darden
36. Acknowledge and appropriate contingency by leveraging surprises rather than trying to avoid them, overcome them, or adapt to them – Darden
37. Relying on and work with human agency as the prime driver of opportunity rather than limiting entrepreneurial efforts to exploiting exogenous factors such as technological trajectories and socio-economic trends – Darden
38. Do not wait to “discover” the perfect opportunity – Darden
39. Act on things they can do without worrying too much about what they ought to do – Darden
40. Reflect an emphasis on future events they can control rather then those they can predict – Darden
41. Are propelled by sufficient conditions for the creation of new ventures and new markets, not through necessary conditions – Darden
42. Make a variety of contributions that, on average, begin to look very much like progress over time – Darden
43. Create something out of nothing – Krauthammer
44. Help other would be entrepreneurs – Inc.

These learnings and experiences have been a guide in my journey. I hope, if you’re on that journey, they help you too.

Do these 44 obstacles describe what makes an entrepreneur to you?