We’ve collected 10 inspirational quotes for entrepreneurs such as yourself. You might be considering getting into the ATM business, or you might need a little motivation to take the next step with your existing ATM business.

The ATM entrepreneur is a little unconventional. You don’t have a product to push, and you don’t have to make sales calls. However, a business is a business, so you will still find yourself struggling to get started, in unknown territory, and on the brink of scaling.

Entrepreneurs before you have experienced similar uncertainty and obstacles. So we’ve taken their wisdom and applied it to the ATM business to help show you that you aren’t alone, that you can do this, and that good mentors can help.

1. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” -Mark Twain

Mark Twain is best known for his novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but he was also an entrepreneur. The money he made from writing he invested in the Paige Compositor, an invention designed to replace the human typesetter.

Overlooking the fact that Twain’s investments caused him to go bankrupt, his writings were extremely successful, and he is still a household name today. He, like most other writers, would agree that you cannot write a book without writing the first chapter. And you cannot write the first chapter without writing the first word.

Similarly, you cannot operate an ATM business without first purchasing a machine, and you can’t place a machine without first finding a location for it. If your dream is to build passive income with an ATM business, you have to take that first step. 

2. “Nothing will work unless you do.” -Maya Angelou

Although not an entrepreneur as it applies to assuming the risks of a business, she did assume the risks of other enterprises. Poet and civil rights activist, Angelou knew that she could not accomplish her goals without hard work.

While the ATM business is a lot less labor intensive than many other business models, it still requires a modicum of effort on your part. The goal of an ATM business is to bring in passive income, but you still have to negotiate a location, make sure the machine is stocked, address any error codes, and fix any damage. 

However, if you can manage these simple tasks and don’t neglect the work, you can run a successful ATM business. 

3. “Rule number one: Never lose money. Rule number two: Never forget rule number one.” -Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is a business magnate and investor worth around 103.8 billion dollars. He is clearly an expert at not losing money….

Now, as an ATM owner, you can take this quote quite literally. You wouldn’t want to lose the bills that enter your machine. And with security options like through-the-wall (TTW) ATM machines and video surveillance, the risk of losing those bills is greatly minimized.

And that’s really the only way to lose money in the ATM business. Once you purchase your ATM equipment, all you have to do is make your return on investment (ROI) and then you can start to profit. That’s it. You have a relatively low startup cost and you can start earning revenue as soon as your machine is up and running.

Now, the rate at which you make your ROI is dependent upon your ATM business strategy itself. There is no doubt you will make money. Every time someone uses your machine you make money. It’s your job to experiment with how much business you can get in a month and find out how you can continue to encourage more business. 

4. “Don’t just commit to the sprint. Commit to the marathon.” -Yulin Lee

Yulin Lee is a money, wealth, and financial coach dedicated to helping women regain control of their finances. Her personal success has been a marathon: a product of endurance and concentrated effort.

Chinese immigrants, her family worked hard to get by in the United States. Lee supported herself through college by working part-time jobs. She made some financial mistakes, learned some lessons, and after 12 years of her career in hi-tech, she pivoted from “income earner to wealth builder.”

If you are anything like Lee, you will not be satisfied with just one ATM machine. No. You will aim to place 10 or more machines throughout your city in order to make thousands of dollars a month in passive income.

A sprint is great if you need to make money right now. But if you want to eventually make even more money and let your ATM gig become your day job, then you will want to focus on scaling your business and adding more machines. 

5. “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.” -Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh is considered the greatest painter after Rembrandt. But van Gogh was not born with a paintbrush in his hand. He didn’t even begin painting until 1880 at the age of 27 and continued for the last ten years of his life.

Van Gogh visited museums and met with other painters. He learned from the styles of French painters, Japanese prints, and Impressionists all before finally developing his own, personal style.

We can all learn from this lesson of van Gogh. We cannot learn until we try. No one wakes up knowing how to run an ATM business. It takes research, strategy, and a mistake or two along the way.

Just because you don’t know, for example, how to configure your machine doesn’t mean you shouldn’t purchase one. The technical side of owning an ATM machine is an aspect you will learn on the job as the need arises. The more you do it, the better you will get, and the easier your business will become. Before you know it, you will be an ATM expert because you’ve been there, done that.

6. “Find a great mentor, someone who has already been through the many challenges of being an entrepreneur.” -Jodi Levine

Jodi Levine is a professional crafter. She is famous for making elaborate crafts out of household and supermarket items. After graduating from RISD, she went on to work for Martha Stewart Living in the Craft Department. Talk about a great mentor! 

If you want to know everything there is to know about the ATM business, you need to find a mentor in the industry. ATMDepot.com is a good place to start. 

CEO Noah Weider has been in the ATM industry since 1994. His mission is to help people understand how the ATM business works and become independent ATM deployers (IADs). Contact ATM Depot to speak with industry professionals with over two decades in the ATM business.

7. “A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.” -Henry Ford

Henry Ford—American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production—died with a net worth equal to $200 billion (adjusted for inflation). 

So you can see where the inspiration for this quote came from…. Ford became one of the richest people in the world.

Henry Ford was so successful because he was devoted to service. Not only did he revolutionize transportation with his Ford Model T, he also was the first to manufacture an automobile that middle-class Americans could afford.

Now, you won’t become a billionaire through your ATM business alone. But you can maximize your profits by devoting yourself to service. You want to offer your customers the convenience of cash withdrawal at any time. Therefore, you want to make all of your decisions with the customer in mind.

What locations are the most in need of your ATM machine? What denominations will your customers expect to be able to withdraw? Can you offer your customers 24-hour access? Will you offer security features that make your customers feel safe using your machine at any time of day?

These are the questions you need to ask yourself when structuring your ATM business. If you have a service mindset, the profits will come. 

8. “There’s no shortage of remarkable ideas. What’s missing is the will to execute them.” -Seth Godin

Seth Godin is a successful entrepreneur, author, and public speaker. He started the idea of Permission Marketing and ended up selling the company to Yahoo! in 1998. He got into Stanford Business School because of a nonprofit company he co-founded.

They started a snack bar, a ticket bureau, a travel agency, a concert promotion business, a birthday cake delivery business, a bagel business… and he and his 400 college student employees ran them all. Now, Godin writes a popular blog, and his company, Squidoo.com, is ranked among the top 75 sites in the US.

Godin’s surplus of “remarkable ideas” might have something to do with his ADD. But the idea is always the easiest part of business, isn’t it? The hard part is the execution.

So if you have the idea to start an ATM business or scale your existing one, you aren’t alone. The difference between you and those who are already operating an ATM or 10 is that they executed their idea. 

If you’d like to start an ATM business, ATM Depot can help. Check out our article “How to Start an ATM Business in 5 Steps.”

9. “A simple rule of business is if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.” -Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg, media magnate and internet entrepreneur is known for co-founding Facebook, Inc. Before dropping out of Harvard to focus exclusively on developing the famous social networking site, Zuckerberg developed a number of other programs such as CourseMatch, Facemash, and Harvard Connection.

While adept at computer software and programming (Zuckerberg created a message program “Zucknet” at the age of 12), the things that come easy to Zuckerberg do not come easy to many people. Fortunately for you, an ATM business is very simple to operate.

The success of Zuckerberg’s early projects led him to the idea for Facebook. Although you won’t become a billionaire from owning and operating ATM machines, you can make a lot of progress with them. 

You don’t have to have a background in banking, electronics, or even business to start an ATM business. So the ATM industry might be daunting to you. But like Zuckerberg says, if you start with the easy parts, the rest will follow. It’s about building momentum and taking things one step at a time. 

10. “If people are doubting how far you can go, go so far that you can’t hear them anymore.” -Michele Ruiz

Michele Ruiz is a three-time serial entrepreneur. She co-founded BiasSync which helps organizations manage unconscious bias in the workforce; founded Ruiz Strategies, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations enhance diversity and inclusion goals; and has an online mentoring program, Possibility Architect, that helps female entrepreneurs scale their businesses.

Ruiz’s inspiration comes from her own experiences. She did not become a successful entrepreneur, keynote speaker, Emmy Award-winning TV news anchor, and best-selling author by letting people tell her that she couldn’t do those things.

If there are people in your life telling you that you can’t start an ATM business, that you don’t know enough, that you can’t make enough, etc., you won’t be worrying about them when you quit your day job or make enough in passive income to get that new car or take that vacation you’ve always dreamed of.

The Benefit of Inspirational Quotes for Entrepreneurs

We all need a little inspiration and motivation from time to time. Whether it’s for starting a business, scaling a business, or just getting out of bed in the morning, we sometimes need to be reminded of those who have been in our shoes and achieved their goals despite adversity. You can apply these inspirational quotes for entrepreneurs to your ATM business no matter which stage you’re at. The first step is to start. The second step is to keep going. And the third step is to ask for help. Remember, you’ve got a partner in ATMDepot.com.