Your own business growth and success depends on many things, and along that growing path, you are going to have to concede certain responsibilities and activities - whether for your accounting, your production, or day-to-day management.
Michael Gerber
Entrepreneurship requires an unvanquished spirit of curiosity, an openness to learning, a letting go of OldCo so you're free to create NewCo.
Trendy gadgets and edgy pitches inevitably get replaced due to the fickle nature of the buying public, but a business designed from the start to play big has the ability to weather trends and redirect itself to venues and products that its customers want and need.
Most entrepreneurs are merely technicians with an entrepreneurial seizure. Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working IN your business rather than ON your business.
If you are with five successful people, then you are the sixth successful person. The reverse of this is true as well, so who are you hanging out with?
There is always going to be someone more successful, richer, better looking, or with a nicer car.
Look at what is average in your area, your industry, and your company and then be better. That could be as simple as reading another book each month or attending a seminar each year. On the other hand, it also means acknowledging what 'average' actually is and how you, as the owner, arrive at that figure.
You can't be the accountant in your accounting firm. You can't cut the grass in your landscaping business. You can't work on the vehicles in your auto repair shop... And you really can't spend all of your time managing those actions, either.
McDonalds. Apple. Starbucks. They were all small businesses, owned by entrepreneurs and people with vision.
As a small business owner, you may not have the luxury to throw good money after bad, but if you can ascertain the 'why' of the failure, you can draw some significance from it and then turn it into something that clients will buy.
Your target market and their demographics realistically need to be in alignment with your own beliefs and morals, or you may have trouble reaching out to them - or keep them once others have entered the market.
Without concentration, a business will be ordinary in every respect, because it will have no presence, no inner force, no way to attract the people upon whom it depends for its very existence - employees, customers, suppliers, and lenders.
Every life a legacy, every small business a school.
For decades, I've spoken of McDonald's as one of the premier examples of how to build a company, scale it, and ultimately sell it.
Ray Kroc called his first McDonald's restaurant, which he opened in Illinois, 'a little money machine.' That's why thousands of franchisees bought it.
You did not disturb Hemingway before noon on Monday through Friday - he was in his office, writing the books that made the lifestyle possible.
The number of businesses that fold due to bad partnerships is staggering. In some cases, they are charlatans, in others inept business people, and others find themselves unable to scale with any growth.
Your Dream, Vision, Purpose, and Mission all come together when you bring products to market - so make sure you're bringing your best.
How can you, as a small business owner, figure out what you are and, from there, begin to take action? Simple - you have to understand what part of the job you are doing and, if it isn't fulfilling the role of the entrepreneur in your business, you must make the decision to take on that role.
A true entrepreneurial enterprise begins with a big idea - a unique way to solve a customer's problem. Your customer, after all, is the only justification for creating a company in the first place. Without a big, transformational idea, you can't produce a great result for your customer.
Remember, if your business isn't making money, then you and your employees aren't, either.
Small business owners and entrepreneurs worthy of the title need to build systems that replace themselves.
Understand this - as a new company, if you don't know how to get interested prospects into your company, then you don't have a company. At the same time, if you, as a owner, have to drive every lead into your business, then you need a real lead generation strategy.
The world is littered with the tales of small businesses in the dire straits of hiring that spent time and money they couldn't afford to hire people who couldn't perform.
Tactical Work is the work you do every day in your business to generate income, along with all of the operational, financial, and management tasks that entails.
Remember: you cannot build a better mouse trap by fixing the old one - NewCo demands active ownership, and that activity is not the sum of doing multiple jobs but, instead, the sum of implementing paradigm-shifting changes that create new industries and solutions.
The only choice that leads small business owners to real success in their endeavors is the one that requires real thought. Understanding and building the systems they need within their company to afford them a framework of organization that can scale the business from a company of one to a company of one thousand.
If you expect to grow your business, you need to be plotting out your schedules days in advance. Until you get that most basic of steps orchestrated, you can never get to the critical steps that I outline in any one of dozens of books.
After decades of studying the men and women that make the decision to open their own Great, Growing Company, I'd have to say it comes down to the Vision they have for that business - do they expect to build the company or just have some income for the short term?
My experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren't so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.
People crave predictability, and when you design and use systems, you give people predictability. More importantly, when you build systems, they can help you orchestrate, and orchestration helps you create the habits that continuously improve the systems!
Everywhere you turn, there are lists and statistics. Any business, any sport, any hobby - we will try to categorize who is the best at some component of that endeavor. It's part human nature and part technology, since we have been conditioned to have access to answers and trivial problems at our fingertips.
The challenge of any business owner is not only to keep the saw sharp, but also to know if you even have a need for such a tool.
You're going to dream no matter what you do in your life, so make those dreams so big that you can attract others who are amazed at your visions and goals.
If you ever hope to get ahead as an entrepreneur, the answer is not becoming an effective juggler, but in understanding and designing the systems to keep your team, not you, busy, busy, busy.
Your success starts with how you are able to get clients in the door, get their business, and leave them satisfied. If you, personally, have to spend too much time doing that, you have simply bought yourself a job, not an enterprise. Take hints from success stories all around you!
'Product life' is measured in months, not years, and as soon as you introduce a 'product,' understand that others in your business are going to reverse engineer it to duplicate the results after they circumnavigate the patents, the trademarks, and the intellectual property.
When I say, 'doin' it, doin' it, doin' it' to a group of small business owners, they immediately respond. They recognize the experience of doing the same things over and over. Keeping the business afloat without ever getting ahead. And it's more than frustrating - it's heartbreaking.
As an entrepreneur and a small business owner, you are intimately familiar with goals. You've dreamed of the 'right' ones, you've projected 'real' ones for the banker and the investor, and, secretly, you've imagined how life can be if you can reach the ones you've set.
The entrepreneur rarely thinks in terms of what he or she wants, but dreams about results - always results and nothing but results - that can solve someone else's problem or contribute to making someone else's life better.
The more Strategic Work you do, the more effective, productive, and joyful the Tactical Work becomes.
If you make converting a lead into a sale harder than a trip to the local DMV, then you lose sales to someone else - with an inferior product - who can make it painless. Don't do that!
Unlike what most people think, entrepreneurs are not special people who know how to do special things that others don't. Entrepreneurs can be made, because we're all born with the potential - that special human quality - to create.
You cannot build a company or manage a life by chasing others; you have to find your success competing against yourself. There will always be a bigger fish.
Whether your dream is a $100,000 in sales or a million, the amount of work is likely the same - you'll still have 86,400 seconds each day, so why couldn't you imagine creating the company and enterprise that can fulfill every aspect of any dream you wish to have?
Your success has to be measured against yourself - a decade ago, last year, or yesterday.
Empirical and observational data along with a healthy dash of intuition often have to be combined as business owners begin to look outward, not inward, at what solutions they can provide to their customers.
I'm not really into the business of giving out tips, but if you are not using an all-encompassing software to integrate and sync your schedule, then you might be losing time. Most of these are free, and they can allow you to keep track of everything in one place and then access that from your computer, phone, or tablet.
Don't look at small business as a means to an end and a way to make money until the corporation hires you; look at it as a chance to create something of immeasurable value and beauty in a world that desperately needs it.
If you are planning to start a business, and if you want that business to have a hope of succeeding, be sure you are approaching your venture from a true Entrepreneurial Perspective.
