The Most Successful Small Business in The World

The Ten Principles

Michael E. Gerber

• Verlag: Wiley
• Jahr: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780470594322
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Commerce
• Thema: Activité entrepreneuriale

A unique guide for the crucial start-up phase of a business

So much attention goes to business practice and operation, yet the majority of ventures still fail. One area often overlooked is preparation. Too few entrepreneurs ask themselves, what are you supposed to do before you start your start-up?

The Most Successful Small Business in The World gives you Michael E. Gerber's unique approach to thinking about the meaning of your company by applying his ten critical steps; a process you must go through long before you ever open your door. With these simple principles, based on expert Michael Gerber's years spent helping countless entrepreneurs, you'll take the essential first steps to lay the groundwork for building what Michael E. Gerber calls The Most Successful Small Business In the World!

• Author Michael Gerber has coached, taught, or trained more than 60, 000 small businesses in 145 countries
• Free Webinar with Gerber for book purchasers
• Gerber's Ten Principles cover everything from defining the meaning of your company, teaching you how to think about systems, the importance of differentiation, perfecting the people within your business, acquiring clients, and more

If you're ready to make your business dream more than just a reality, and resolve to do something bigger than you ever imagined, The Most Successful Small Business In The World will provide you with a stunningly original process for thinking yourself through it. Yes, you too can create The Most Successful Small Business In The World... Michael E. Gerber will show you exactly how to do it.

“...then I was a young man a thousand years old, and now I am an old man waiting to be born.”

—Charles Bukowski
Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way

Chapter 1
The First Principle
A Small Business, Built Rightly, Can Grow 10,000 Times Its Current Size

The loftier the building, the deeper the foundation must be laid.

—Thomas Kempis

Had each and every one of my previous books begun with this First Principle, we would probably be having a completely different conversation right now. Either more people would have read my books, or fewer would have.

This is because only an infinitesimal number of new business owners start their new business with a notion of size other than the word “small.” And that's why their businesses never grow beyond their notion.

Most businesses, no matter their age, remain adamantly small.

Note that 70 percent of all companies and 100 percent of home businesses are sole proprietorships. One person, or two, and that's all, operate the business. These businesses are populated by owners working for a living. They are working at a job and nothing more. But of course that's all they ever wanted to do. All they ever wanted to do was to create a job; to create control over their personal income; to create a place to work, a place to do what they know how to do. Or, if not that, to do something, anything, through which they can turn their labor and ideas into money. In short, they want to be self-employed.

Needless to say, these commercial activities are not businesses at all; not in the context we speak of here. They are gardeners gardening. They are architects bending over their boards. They are therapists tending to their flocks. They are rabbis teaching. They are doers doing what doers do. They are what they are, but nothing more than that. What they do seems to be how they are defined.

In E-Myth terms, they are technicians suffering from entrepreneurial seizures. And lots of attention is spent on them. Time spent teaching them how to organize, to market, to sell, to network, to do their bookkeeping, to get by. They are told that the idea of going out on their own is to do what they love. And once having done that, everything else will come their way.

Unfortunately, it isn't true, and it never has been. That's why most businesses fail—they aren't businesses at all. And because the people who own them, run them, and depend on them don't really love them for very long, if they ever did.

Because there is nothing to love. Unless work, for the sake of work, is something to love. Unless struggling just to make a living is something to love.

I imagine that you could make a case for it. But, I can't, and I never could. Work for the sake of work is ultimately an exhausting enterprise. All pain, no gain. Always the cart before the horse. Where's the magic, after all?

Not, mind you, that you shouldn't do what you love, if you can. But, you shouldn't attempt to build a business out of it.

More importantly, this book says that instead of doing what you love, you should love what you do. Do it and love it, provided that it makes sense, that is. Provided that there is a magnificent reason for doing it. Provided that it is much bigger than just something you love. Provided that it is something that your customers love, that your employees love, and that the community in which you do business loves. Provided that your business is a lovable, wonderful, loving thing. A remarkable, beautiful, capable, competent...oh well, you get my point. Love what you do, and it will love you back. And everything you put into it—your time, your energy, your money, your imagination, your sweat, your purpose, your commitment, your determination—all of that will be called a labor of love.

But, again, for all of that to happen—and it will, as you'll discover in this book—this business of yours has to make sense. And for it to make sense, for it to thrive, for it to become something much more than a job like it is now, it must possess the unique ability to grow. It must possess the unique ability to grow not just bigger, but to a substantial, unbelievable-to-you-at-this-moment-in-time size.

And that's why “10,000 times” is the First Principle. It will shape every single decision you make from the first moment you decide that a business of your own is something you truly wish to create. Or, even now, even after you've started your own business, even after you've opened the doors, even after you've set out to work like a madman or madwoman, even then, even now, we've got something big to talk about.

Something Big to Talk About

If it were just about size, of course, this conversation would be unnecessary. Because there's a very big part of you that believes I'm out of my mind.

You're working in your home office. Your kids are running around the house. You've just had breakfast in the kitchen nook, and your wife (or your husband) is telling the kids, “Hush! Daddy's [Mommy's] working!” And the kids react like kids do. They don't listen. Of course not. Would you? Work? What does that mean? It means whatever Mommy and Daddy do when they're not busy with you. Work makes absolutely no sense to kids. Not the kind of work you and your significant other do. If there was a tractor involved, or the horses needed to be fed, or the trees needed to be pruned, or the stone wall needed to be mended, or the car needed to be fixed, yes. Now that's work a kid can understand. It has a direct relationship with living. It's where the food comes from. It has meaning. It's real.

But, not what you do. What you do has no meaning to a kid at all. That's one reason why our kids are so distracted from the ordinary stuff of life. That's why they find so little meaning in what grownups do. And that's why, too, they find so little meaning in what you want them to do.

“To make a living? What's that?”

“Well, silly, that's where the money comes from.”

“Oh.”

So, the idea is (your kid thinks), that when I grow up like Mommy and Daddy, I too will end up doing things all day that haven't any meaning. So I can make a living. So I can end up old like them.

And so the reasons for this book:

• To talk about the process for creating something that has meaning. A meaning that goes beyond making a living. A meaning that goes beyond getting by. A meaning that goes beyond simply being your own boss. A meaning that goes beyond what your kids see, or what they don't.
• Something bigger. Something grander. Something more potent. Something meaningful has to happen from the very first moment you put your mind to the wheel of your imagination, or your imagination to the wheel of your mind.
• Something you can write home about.

10,000 times! Just think. What would you do if you honestly believed you were going to create 10,000 stores, 10,000 offices, 10,000 shops, or 10,000 orchards. Or 10,000 of whatever it is you have set out to do?

10,000 times! My goodness. Where in the world would you begin? And how? Let's take a look at it.

The Beginning of Big

Everything has a beginning. That's where we are. We are going to invent an enterprise that has the ability to grow 10,000 times. We are going to do that, because if we fail to do that our enterprise won't be an enterprise; it will be incapable of growth. Don't believe me? Look at the business next door.

The business next door is easier to look at than your own. The business next door was started by Joseph, the auto mechanic. Or by Mary, the cook. Or by Frederick, the chiropractor.

But, let's for the moment stick with Joseph.

He comes to work every morning, looking pretty much the same way he looked yesterday morning, and the morning before that.

Joseph is more than likely dressed in his coveralls. They are well-worn coveralls. Probably still have the grease from yesterday's or earlier days' jobs.

On the back of his coveralls it might say something like “Joseph's Auto Repair.” What else would it say? Because, of course, that's what Joseph does, and has done for years. Joseph fixes cars. Joseph has always fixed cars, either for someone else or for himself.

Joseph could be, for all you know, a fine mechanic. At least it seems like he could. Of course he may not be, but it's unlikely you'll know. There are lots of cars sitting in the lot waiting for Joseph to fix them. But, it doesn't seem to make much difference to Joseph.

People come and people go, but for all you can tell, Joseph isn't in any hurry, even though his customers seem to be. Even though his customers seem to want their car done, and done now, Joseph isn't in a hurry. But, Joseph has seen just about everything one could see when it comes to fixing cars. Cars break down. Cars get fixed. And the clock goes on, just like before.

Joseph is actually quite lucky. If predictability can be thought of as lucky, that is. Because, no matter what Joseph does or doesn't do, his business seems to continue apace, one car after another, waiting for Joseph to do what Joseph does... fix cars.

The clock ticks on and on. And Joseph gets older. If you could span the time, if you could see it from above; if you could watch Joseph from another perspective, see the whole story of Joseph's life, you would know som...