The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

by Michael E. Gerber

It’s your customer’s Unconscious Mind.

What is your customer’s Unconscious Mind?

your customer’s expectations.

And that’s how buying decisions are made. Irrationally!

The Two Pillars of a Successful Marketing Strategy

If you know who your customer is—demographics—you can then determine why he buys—psychographics.

“Find a perceived need and fill it.” Because if your customer doesn’t perceive he needs something, he doesn’t, even if he actually does.

So if anything, you must take marketing more seriously than a big business does.

There are three kinds of systems in your business: Hard Systems, Soft Systems, and Information Systems. Hard Systems are inanimate, unliving things. My computer is a Hard System, as are the colors in this office’s reception area. Soft Systems are either animate—living—or ideas. You are a Soft System; so is the script for Hamlet. Information Systems are those that provide us with information about the interaction between the other two.

“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

Because Comfort overtakes us all when we’re least prepared for it. Comfort makes cowards of us all.