Excerpt: Small business guru Michael Gerber will help you become a successful entrepreneur. These quotes from The E-Myth Revisited will get you going.
Book Overview: E-Myth \ ‘e-,’mith\ n 1: the entrepreneurial myth: the myth that most people who start small businesses are entrepreneurs 2: the fatal assumption that an individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does that technical work. Small business consultant and author Michael E. Gerber walks you through the steps in the life of a business—from entrepreneurial infancy through adolescent growing pains to the mature entrepreneurial perspective: the guiding light of all businesses that succeed—and shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business, whether or not it is a franchise. Most importantly, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business.
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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“A dojo is a miniature cosmos where we make contact with ourselves—our fears, anxieties, reactions, and habits. It is an arena of confined conflict where we confront an opponent who is not an opponent but rather a partner engaged in helping us understand ourselves more fully. It is a place where we can learn a great deal in a short time about who we are and how we react in the world. The conflicts that take place inside the dojo help us handle the conflicts that take place outside. The total concentration and discipline required to study martial arts carries over to daily life. The activity in the dojo calls on us to constantly attempt new things, so it is also a source of learning—in Zen terminology, a source of self-enlightenment.”
Joe Hyams, Zen in the Martial Arts
“We are an ‘out there’ society, accustomed to thinking in terms of them against us. We want to fix the world so that we can remain the same. And for an ‘out there’ society, coming ‘inside’ is a problem. But now is the time to learn how. Now is the time to change. Because unless we do, the chaos will remain. And we can’t afford this kind of chaos much longer. We’re simply running out of time.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 261)
“We can’t change the world ‘out there.’ And fortunately, we don’t have to; we can begin much slower to home. We can begin ‘in here.’ In fact, if we’re to succeed, we must. Because the chaos isn’t ‘out there’ in everyone else. It’s not ‘out there’ in the world. The chaos is ‘in here’ in you and me. The world’s not the problem; you and I are. The world’s not in chaos; we are. The world’s apparent chaos is only a reflection of our own inner turmoil.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 260)
“We’ve fast become a world of things. And most people are being buried in the profusion. What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, and meaning. A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential. A place where the generally disorganized thinking that pervades our culture becomes organized and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result. A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are: the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally. A place that replaces the home most of us have lost.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 207)
“The business is a place where everything we know how to do is tested by what we don’t know how to do, and that the conflict between the two is what creates growth, what creates meaning.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 201)
“The customer is not always right, but whether he is or not, it is our job to make him feel that way.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 201)
“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 Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 200)
“Autograph your work with excellence,” has become a sort of mantra that I live by. Whatever I set out to do, I always try to give it my absolute best shot. And it doesn’t matter what it is. It could be something important like writing these articles or something that might be considered more menial like vacuuming the rug. The underlying idea is that all work that gets done always gets done with an autograph attached to the work. And that autograph, that work, as Gerber points out above, acts as a reflection of the person who did it. The question that you then have to ask yourself is, what does your work say about you?
Read More »Michael Gerber Quote on How The Work We Do is a Reflection of Who We AreThe Zen teacher’s dog loved his evening romp with his master. The dog would bound ahead to fetch a stick, then run back, wag his tail, and wait for the next game. On this particular evening, the teacher invited one of his brightest students to join him—a boy so intelligent that he became troubled by the contradictions in Buddhist doctrine.
Read More »Don’t Confuse The Pointing Finger With What’s Being Pointed At — On Understanding Words“Beginning today, I will create a new future by creating a new me. No longer will I dwell in a pit of despair, moaning over squandered time and lost opportunity. I can do nothing about the past. My future is immediate. I will grasp it in both hands and carry it with running feet. When I am faced with the choice of doing nothing or doing something, I will always choose to act! I seize this moment. I choose now.”
Andy Andrews
One of the best ways to build a better lifestyle is to focus less on trying to break bad habits and to focus more on building new, better habits. One of the best ways to feel better when you’re hurt is to focus less on analyzing the pain and to focus more on doing what heals you. One of the best ways to overcome hate is to focus less on the hate and to focus more on love. This is all to say, one of the best ways to move on from a rough past is to focus on building a better future.
Read More »Andy Andrews Quote on Creating a New Future and No Longer Dwelling On The Past
Excerpt: The following is an excerpt from The Great Work of Your Life by Stephen Cope. In it, he describes how Mantra can help settle, calm, focus, and direct the mind in powerful ways.
“Micromanaging erodes people’s confidence, making them overly dependent on their leaders. Well-meaning leaders inadvertently sabotage their teams by rushing to the rescue and offering too much help. A leader needs to balance assistance with wu wei, backing off long enough to let people learn from their mistakes and develop competence.”
Diane Dreher
In the earliest stages of a child’s development it is the responsibility of the parents to provide the most ideal nurturing environments and circumstances. Children are, essentially, completely dependent on what their parents provide. As they grow, however, so too does their ability to accept responsibility and manage their own surroundings—starting on a micro level and growing in size proportionally as they mature.
Read More »Diane Dreher Quote on Micromanaging and How It May Cause More Harm Than Good“If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.”
Jim Rohn
When we are born, we are but a seed in the ground. We have a nature and we are all affected by how we are nurtured. It is not a question of whether we are a product of one or the other—we are all a product of both. The nature of a tree, for example, is determined by the seed that it sprouts from. An oak tree seed has one nature and one nature only, to grow into an oak tree. An oak tree cannot grow into a maple tree nor can it grow into a redwood tree. It’s nature is predetermined by the genetic coding that is packaged within the seed from which it sprouts. This is it’s nature. Our nature—our genetic makeup—is determined by our parents. This cannot be changed.
Read More »Jim Rohn Quote on Remembering That You’re Not A Tree — And Changing What You Don’t Like“You do something all day long, don’t you? Every one does. If you get up at seven o’clock and go to bed at eleven, you have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain with most people, that they have been doing something all the time. They have been either walking, or reading, or writing, or thinking. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things and I do it about one. If they took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one object, they would succeed. Success is sure to follow such application. The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object, one thing, to which they stick, letting all else go. Success is the product of the severest kind of mental and physical application.”
Thomas Edison, How They Succeeded
“You always hold the rights to your effort, but never to your results. Results are entitled to no one. At best, they are on loan and must be renewed each day. All you own is the right to try.”
James Clear, Blog
