The E-myth Revisited Quotes

“What exactly is the Entrepreneurial Model? It’s a model of a business that fulfills the perceived needs of a specific segment of customers in an innovative way.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

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

“What’s important is the business: how it looks, how it acts, how it does what it is intended to do.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“He needs to know why he’s doing what he’s doing. He needs to know the result he’s accountable for and the standards against which his work is being evaluated. He also needs to know where the business is going and where his accountabilities fit into its overall strategy.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“if your business is going to become a significant component of your Primary Aim, you have to let your business know what that Aim is! And how can you expect to do that, if you don’t know what it is? Do you see why your Primary Aim is so important to the success of your business? With no clear picture of how you wish your life to be, how on earth can you begin to live it? How would you know what first step to take? How would you measure your progress? How would you know where you were? How would you know how far you had gone? How would you know how much farther you had yet to go? Without your Primary Aim, you wouldn’t. Indeed, you couldn’t. It would be virtually impossible. As with Mature companies, I believe great people to be those who know how they got where they are, and what they need to do to get where they’re going. Great people have a vision of their lives that they practice emulating each and every day. They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives. Their lives are spent living out the vision they have of their future, in the present. They compare what they’ve done with what they intended to do. And where there’s a disparity between the two, they don’t wait very long to make up the difference. They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“So if your business is to change—as it must continuously to thrive—you must change first. If you are unwilling to change, your business will never be capable of giving you what you want.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“If your thinking is sloppy, your business will be sloppy. If you are disorganized, your business will be disorganized. If you are greedy, your employees will be greedy, giving you less and less of themselves and always asking for more. If your information about what needs to be done in your business is limited, your business will reflect that limitation. So if”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“All organizations are hierarchical. At each level people serve under those above them. An organization is therefore a structured institution. If it is not structured, it is a mob. Mobs do not get things done, they destroy things.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Because true trust comes from knowing, not from blind faith.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“They intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“In short, you would see how The Entrepreneur in you dreams and schemes, The Manager in you is constantly attempting to keep things as they are, and The Technician in you drives the other two crazy. You would see that it not only matters that your personalities are not in a balanced relationship with each other but that your life depends on gaining that balance. That until you do, it’s a war! And it’s a war no one can win.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“By asking the right questions, such as: Where do I wish to be? When do I wish to be there? How much capital will that take? How many people, doing what work, and how? What technology will be required? How large a space will be needed, at Benchmark One, at Benchmark Two, at Benchmark Three?”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“In art, it thrives in the rarefied arena of the avant-garde. In business, The Entrepreneur is the innovator, the grand strategist, the creator of new methods”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“It’s easy to spot a business in Infancy—the owner and the business are one and the same thing.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Life is what a business is about, and life is what this work is about. Coming to grips with oneself, in the face of an incredibly complex world that can teach us if we’re open to learn.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

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

“great businesses are not built by extraordinary people but by ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“It reveals an understanding of what makes a great business great. It also tells us what makes all other businesses survivable at their best; intolerable at their worst.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Psychographics is the science of perceived marketplace reality. It tells you why your customer buys.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“An Opportunity Worth Pursuing is a business that can fulfill the financial standards you’ve created for your Primary Aim and your Strategic Objective.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“The first standard of your Strategic Objective is money. Gross revenues. How big is your vision? How big will your company be when it’s finally done? Will it be a $300,000 company? A million-dollar company? A $500-million company?”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Your Business Strategy and Plan are a way of communicating to anyone you must communicate to the direction your business is going, how it intends to get there, and the specific benchmarks it will need to hit in order for the Strategy and Plan to work.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“these questions: What do I value most? What kind of life do I want? What do I want my life to look like, to feel like? Who do I wish to be?”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“But before you can determine what that role will be, you must ask yourself”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“The greatest businesspeople I’ve met are determined to get it right no matter what the cost. And by getting it right, I’m not just talking about the business. I mean that there is something uplifting, some vision, some higher end in sight that “getting it right” would serve. An ethical certainty, a moral principle, a universal truth.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“And, if it’s true what Don Juan said in Tales of Power, that “The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything either as 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

“I’d like you to imagine that you are about to attend one of the most important occasions of your life. It will be held in a room sufficiently large to seat all of your friends, your family, your business associates—anyone and everyone to whom you are important and who is important to you. Can you see it? The walls are draped with deep golden tapestries. The lighting is subdued, soft, casting a warm glow on the faces of your expectant guests. Their chairs are handsomely upholstered in a golden fabric that matches the tapestries. The golden carpeting is deeply piled. At the front of the room is a dais, and on the dais a large, beautifully decorated table, with candles burning at either end. On the table, in the center, is the object of everyone’s attention. A large, shining, ornate box. And in the box is…you! Stiff as the proverbial board. Do you see yourself lying in the box, not a dry eye in the room? Now, listen. From the four corners of the room comes a tape recording of your voice. Can you hear it? You’re addressing your guests. You’re telling them the story of your life. How would you like that story to go? That’s your Primary Aim. What would you like to be able to say about your life after it’s too late to do anything about it? That’s your Primary Aim. If you were to write a script for the tape to be played for the mourners at your funeral, how would you like it to read? That’s your Primary Aim. And once you’ve created the script, all you need to do is make it come true. All you need to do is begin living your life as if it were important. All you need to do is take your life seriously. To create it intentionally. To actively make your life into the life you wish it to be.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“Because in a business like that what your customers are buying is not your business’s ability to give them what they want but your ability to give them what they want. And that’s what’s wrong with it!”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“And because it starts that way, it is more likely to continue that way. And therein resides the true difference between an Adolescent company, where everything is left up to chance, and a Mature company, where there is a vision against which the present is shaped.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“it’s not the commodity or the work itself that is important. What’s important is the business: how it looks, how it acts, how it does what it is intended to do.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It