Michael Gerber Quotes

The true start-up of a business is what happens before you start-up.

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,

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.

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.

most businesses are operated according to what the owner wants as opposed to what the business needs.

Tolerance for failure is a very specific part of the excellent company culture — and that lesson comes directly from the top. Champions have to make lots of tries and consequently suffer some failures or the organization won’t learn. Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. In Search of Excellence

A business that looks orderly says to your customer that your people know what they’re doing.

To The Manager, then, The Technician becomes a problem to be managed. To The Technician, The Manager becomes a meddler to be avoided. To both of them, The Entrepreneur is the one who got them into trouble in the first place!

Once you recognize that the purpose of your life is not to serve your business, but that the primary purpose of your business is to serve your life, you can then go to work on your business, rather than in it, with a full understanding of why it is absolutely necessary for you to do so.

Simply put, your job is to prepare yourself and your business for growth.

They intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are. Aldous Huxley

The system isn’t something you bring to the business. It’s something you derive from the process of building the business.

And what makes people work is an idea worth working for, along with a clear understanding of what needs to be done.

Quality is just a word, and an empty word at that, if it doesn’t include harmony, balance, passion, intention, attention. “Continuous improvement for its own sake is a waste of time. “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.

So in the development of your Marketing Strategy, it is absolutely imperative that you forget about your dreams, forget about your visions, forget about your interests, forget about what you want — forget about everything but your customer!