Have you been feeling that the path to inspiration in your business has been hiding itself lately? Few things are more frustrating than losing sight of what originally motivated you to become an entrepreneur and start your own business, but it happens to all of us. And the sooner you get yourself out of that rut, the better.

I hope you find inspirational ideas in today’s post that you can add to your collection of business helps. Make a habit of referring back to them often so you don’t find yourself running out of steam too often.

Five Inspirational Business Tips

• Read inspirational stories about other successful entrepreneurs. J.K. Rowling is often one of the first women that gets mentioned when it comes to rags to riches stories about entrepreneurs. The Harry Potter series was birthed out of one of the darkest, poorest periods of her life, yet it brought her to a higher level of fame and achievement than most people will ever experience.

• Forget about needing a degree. Many entrepreneurs find success elusive and get all wrapped in blaming it on lack of higher education. Yet people like Steve Jobs, Harrison Ford and even Lady Gaga all made it big without a college degree to their name. If it’s one thing we can learn from successful college dropouts, it’s that a Harvard degree is not a requirement to become an entrepreneur.

• Motivate yourself with inspirational quotes. You don’t have to turn into a pie-in-the-sky, “Pollyana” type to appreciate motivational phrases, as they really do just that – motivate you! Whether you choose to just punch in “inspirational quotes” into Google every morning or buy volumes of motivational books on your Kindle, I believe you should start your day off with an inspirational phrase or chapter of some kind.

• Stop fearing failure and start looking forward to success. Depending on how long you’ve paid attention to entrepreneur and small business teaching tools, you’ve probably learned somewhere along the way that the fear of failure is often the one and only thing keeping you from succeeding. You know what? Many successful entrepreneurs fail many times before they make it big. We learn from our mistakes! Don’t view mistakes as failure – look at them as necessary learning experiences and press on. You can do it!

• Create an inspiration board and add something new to it each week. Get yourself one of those decorative push-pin boards and add inspirational pictures, quotes, cutouts and scenes to it. Print them off the computer, write them on notebook paper, rip them out of magazines – wherever you find inspiration, tack it onto your board. Display it in your office or workspace so you can see it every day, and when you need a five-second pick-me-up, it will be there to remind you why you’re working so hard on your business.

Each of these are simple ways to add an extra spark of encouragement to your entrepreneur life as you build your business.  In addition to working these into your daily business life, I highly encourage you to check out AWSC. I guarantee that our coaching will help you in just about any aspect of your business and ensure that you receive all the motivation you need – and on a personal level.