Quotes from Michael E. Gerber

Ouspensky was saying that hell on earth is life as we have always lived it, and heaven on earth is breaking free of our long-standing patterns.

What is standing in the way of my customer getting what he wants from my business?

Documentation is an affirmation of order.

the business that was supposed to free him from the limitations of working for somebody else actually enslaves him. Suddenly the job he knew how to do so well becomes one job he knows how to do plus a dozen others he doesn't know how to do at all.

It's up to you to dictate your business's rate of growth as best you can by understanding the key processes that need to be performed, the key objectives that need to be achieved, the key position you are aiming your business to hold in the marketplace.

Building a World Class Company is a commitment to the integration of passion, purpose, and practice.

To be a great Technician is simply insufficient to the task of building a great small business. Being consumed by the tactical work of the business, as every Technician suffering from an Entrepreneurial Seizure is, leads to only one thing: a complicated, frustrating, and, eventually, demeaning job!

So in the development of your Marketing Strategy, it is absolutely imperative that you forget about your dreams, forget about your visions, forget about your interests, forget about what you want—forget about everything but your customer!

There was absolutely no consistency to the experience.

The Franchise Prototype is also the place where all assumptions are put to the test to see how well they work before becoming operational in the business.

Mature company is founded on a broader perspective, an entrepreneurial perspective, a more intelligent point of view. About building a business that works not because of you but without you.

So when you ask, "Is this business an Opportunity Worth Pursuing?" the only way to tell is to determine how many selling opportunities you have (your customers' demographics) and how successfully you can satisfy the emotional or perceived needs lurking there (your customers' psychographics).

1. Your Primary Aim 2. Your Strategic Objective 3. Your Organizational Strategy 4. Your Management Strategy 5. Your People Strategy 6. Your Marketing Strategy 7. Your Systems Strategy

It's time for me to challenge my imagination and to begin the process of shaping an entirely new life. And the best way to do that anywhere in this whole wide opportunity-filled world is to create an exciting new business.

for many people, a job is crucial psychologically, over and above the paycheck. By making clear demands on their time and energy, it provides an element of structure around which the rest of their lives can be organized."2 The operative word here is clear. Documentation provides the clarity structure needs if it is to be meaningful to your people.

seen from the appropriate perspective, the entire business process by which your company does what it does is a marketing process.

Because, the moment you chose to start a small business, Sarah, you unwittingly chose to play a significantly larger game than any game you had ever played before.

Thus, the Entrepreneurial Model does not start with a picture of the business to be created but of the customer for whom the business is to be created. It understands that without a clear picture of that customer, no business can succeed.

a business that 'gets small again' is a business reduced to the level of its owner's personal resistance to change, to its owner's Comfort Zone

And as the world becomes more and more complex, and the commodities more varied, the feelings we want become more urgent, less rational, more unconscious.

The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.

Thus freedom is not just the matter of saying 'Yes' or 'No' to a specific decision: it is the power to mold and create ourselves. Freedom is the capacity, to use Nietzsche's phrase, 'to become what we truly are.'"1 And

If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster. —Steven R. Covey

There is no such thing as undesirable work," he continued. "There are only people who see certain kinds of work as undesirable. People who use every excuse in the world to justify why they have to do work they hate to do. People who look upon their work as a punishment for who they are and where they stand in the world, rather than as an opportunity to see themselves as they really are.