Top 70 Michael Gerber Quotes

There are three things that can be organized: time, space, and work. Note that, despite what many believe, you cannot organize people – you can only organize the work that people do.

Build a company that changes the way things get done!

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!

McDonalds. Apple. Starbucks. They were all small businesses, owned by entrepreneurs and people with vision.

Every life a legacy, every small business a school.

Remember, if your business isn’t making money, then you and your employees aren’t, either.

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?

When you consider how many people are really not good at communication in general and interviewing in specific, it’s no wonder that many companies struggle to build high-quality partnerships – or even staffs.

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.

Here’s the problem with phones – they are a ready-made diversion from the considerably harder work of growing a business.

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.

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 haven’t created the time as an owner to understand why people are choosing your model over your competition, then you are only managing the business that comes in the door, not actively seeking it out.

It is one thing to seek out new ways to grow your company and new potential streams of income from new services or products, but it is quite another to take on responsibilities that are far from your primary job as Entrepreneur.

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.

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.

Your Dream, Vision, Purpose, and Mission all come together when you bring products to market – so make sure you’re bringing your best.

There is always going to be someone more successful, richer, better looking, or with a nicer car.

Entrepreneurship requires an unvanquished spirit of curiosity, an openness to learning, a letting go of OldCo so you’re free to create NewCo.

As with anything we do as entrepreneurs, researching how our businesses impact and influence our customers and our markets – and our world – is critical to building something of value as a business.

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.

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.

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.

In my experience, most small businesses are worried about the client fulfillment – ‘getting the Job done’ – and lead generation far more than they are in how the sales process flows.

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 deciding factor of why some entrepreneurs are successful and others fail is not limited to your DNA or your education; it is about the actions you take as the leader of your business.

No matter what, once the doors are open for business, the entrepreneur has no choice but to be directing multiple attacks at once – raising money, writing software, prototyping, selling, collecting, training, and marketing.

You did not disturb Hemingway before noon on Monday through Friday – he was in his office, writing the books that made the lifestyle possible.

Take the time to create an easy-flowing process that makes the sale, saves time, and gives you the best chance to scale a system that can pay off as you grow and scale.

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.

The Internet is fundamentally free, and when faced with the decision to use something free, we, as humans, always seek to grab all we can.

People who lack the skill of discrimination tend to believe that everything is of relatively equal importance.

Communication is the channel through which life is conveyed, through which ideas and the energy behind them are transmitted, and through which the mind, body, and spirit are merged into a force for right action.

No matter what your company does – build, manage, produce, import – as an owner, you can’t avoid the hard work and skip straight to success. No class can give you that, no YouTube video can teach it, and no book can mark it off your list.

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?

Nobody knew they needed a smart phone, an automobile, or even a cheeseburger from a drive through window.

The greatest business people I’ve met are determined to get it right no matter what the cost.

Small business owners and entrepreneurs worthy of the title need to build systems that replace themselves.

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.

Most people who go into business for themselves and, therefore, believe they are entrepreneurs, are doomed to struggle because they don’t have a true Entrepreneurial Perspective. They have a Technician’s Perspective.

I don’t know why the word ‘solopreneur’ is in our lexicon. Nobody can physically do it all by themselves, and more importantly, why would they want to? Being the sales team, the HR department, management, and production all by yourself is terrible. Period.

I’m not here to tell you what your average needs to be, but it would seem to me that one way to protect yourself, as an entrepreneur, from the dreaded average is to understand what that looks like in your industry, your business, and your personal life and take the steps to be above average.

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.

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!

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.

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.

No matter what, the entrepreneur must strive to be above average and, at the same time, understand what is driving those averages they are seeking to beat. Take the time to understand and test the metrics you are using, and then you can not only set the average, you can exceed it.

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!

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.