The E-myth Revisited Quotes

“The purpose of going into business is to get free of a job so you can create jobs for other people.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“The game has to be real. You have to mean it. The game is a measure of you.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“He said, ‘The work we do is a reflection of who we are. If we’re sloppy at it, it’s because we’re sloppy inside. If we’re late at it, it’s because we’re late inside. If we’re bored by it, it’s because we’re bored inside, with ourselves, not with the work. The most menial work can be a piece of art when done by an artist. So the job here is not outside of ourselves, but inside of ourselves. How we do our work becomes a mirror of how we are inside.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Your arrows do not carry,’ observed the Master, ‘because they do not reach far enough spiritually.’ Eugen Herrigel Zen and the Art of Archery”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“The craftsperson develops a knowingness about the work she does that bears its own fruit, the fruit of being present, or attentive. The craftsperson learns that within the work she does there is a jewel hiding below the surface. That the thrill of the craft is to discover the jewel. And that there is only one way to discover it: to practice the craft mindlessly. To become one with the work. To polish and polish, as though with one’s heart. That there is no way to know when the jewel will show itself, but to trust with all one’s heart that one day, when it is least expected, the jewel will be there! It will appear. “And so the craftsperson is one who has reached that stage of her development where she is content with the work, and only the work, knowing that it is only through being there with one’s work that the jewel will reveal itself, and that it is the work, and only the work, raised to the level of near perfection that connects the craftsperson with herself, with her own heart. And so she practices, day in and day out, content to do so, without the thrill of the apprentice to keep her going, but knowing deep inside that there is no place to go but here.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Because every extraordinary business knows that when you intentionally build your business around the skills of ordinary people, you will be forced to ask the difficult questions about how to produce a result without the extraordinary ones. You will be forced to find a system that leverages your ordinary people to the point where they can produce extraordinary results over and over again. You will be forced to invent innovative system solutions to the people problems that have plagued small businesses (and big businesses as well!) since the beginning of time. You will be forced to build a business that works. You will be forced to do the work of Business Development not as a replacement for people development but as its necessary correlate.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Now, from the outside in, I can understand why you might be critical of McDonald’s. You might say that people shouldn’t eat meat. You might say that the hamburgers could be fatter, or less fatty, or this or that. But what you couldn’t say—what you could never say—is that McDonald’s doesn’t keep its promise. Because it does. Better than just about any business in the world, McDonald’s, the love of Ray Kroc’s life, still keeps its promise, long after Ray Kroc has gone. It delivers exactly what we have come to expect of it every single time.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Remember, Sarah, any plan is better than no plan. “Because in the process of defining the future, the plan begins to shape itself to reality, both the reality of the world out there and the reality you are able to create in here. “And as those two realities merge, they form a new reality—call it your reality, call it the unique invention that is uniquely yours, the reality of your mind and your heart uniting with all the elements of your business, and your business with the world, shaping, designing, collaborating, to form something that never existed before in exactly that way.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“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.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Systems theory looks at the world in terms of the interrelatedness of all phenomena, and in this framework an integrated whole whose properties cannot be reduced to those of its parts is called a system. Fritjof Capra The Turning Point”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon and an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur, once said about his company: “In the factory Revlon manufactures cosmetics, but in the store Revlon sells hope.” The commodity is cosmetics; the product, hope.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“the typical small business owner is only 10 percent Entrepreneur, 20 percent Manager, and 70 percent Technician.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Said another way, the Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important—the way it’s delivered is. When The Entrepreneur creates the model,”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Freedom does not come automatically; it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound; it must be achieved each day. Rollo May”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“That your Primary Aim and your Strategic Objective and your Organizational Strategy and your Management Strategy and your People Strategy and your Marketing Strategy and your Systems Strategy—all of them are totally interdependent, rather than independent of one another.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“the true work of the small business owner—the strategic work rather than the tactical work.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“If you know who your customer is—demographics—you can then determine why he buys—psychographics.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“The System produces the results; your people manage the system.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“an effective Prototype is a business that finds and keeps customers—profitably—better than any other.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Your Strategic Objective is just such a list of standards. It is a tool for measuring your progress toward a specific end. It is designed for implementation, not for rationalization.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“But unless your Business Strategy and Plan can be reduced to a set of simple and clearly stated standards, it will do more to confuse you than to help.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“By recognizing that it is not the commodity that demands Innovation but the process by which it is sold, the franchisor aims his innovative energies at the way in which his business does business.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Building the Prototype of your business is a continuous process, a Business Development Process.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“1. The model will provide consistent value to your customers, employees, suppliers, and lenders, beyond what they expect. 2. The model will be operated by people with the lowest possible level of skill. 3. The model will stand out as a place of impeccable order. 4. All work in the model will be documented in Operations Manuals. 5. The model will provide a uniformly predictable service to the customer. 6. The model will utilize a uniform color, dress, and facilities code.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“McDonald’s has not only created an extraordinary business, it has created for all of us small business owners an extraordinary way to create an extraordinary business. It has created a model we can emulate.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“In other words, I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“companies like McDonald’s, Federal Express, and Disney didn’t end up as Mature companies. They started out that way! The people who started them had a totally different perspective about what a business is and why it works.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“What do I wish my life to look like? • How do I wish my life to be on a day-to-day basis? • What would I like to be able to say I truly know in my life, about my life? • How would I like to be with other people in my life—my family, my friends, my business associates, my customers, my employees, my community? • How would I like people to think about me? • What would I like to be doing two years from now? Ten years from now? Twenty years from now? When my life comes to a close? • What specifically would I like to learn during my life—spiritually, physically, financially, technically, intellectually? About relationships? • How much money will I need to do the things I wish to do? By when will I need it?”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Because, after all, that’s all that any Business Format Franchise really is. It is a proprietary way of doing business that successfully and preferentially differentiates every extraordinary business from every one of its competitors. In this light, every great business in the world is a franchise.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It