Zitat des Tages von Michael Gerber:
As the owner, you have to look into the mind of the customer and see and feel how their relationship to your product works - not just that the product works.
The greatest business people I've met are determined to get it right no matter what the cost.
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.
Be honest: if your pitch is 90 minutes and you only have 60 set aside for a business lunch or a cup of coffee, there is no way that you can give an honest representation of your company or products. You're lying to yourself and wasting your own time as well as that of your prospect or partner.
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.
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.
One of the biggest challenges we have, as business owners and people, is that we think in linear terms.
More than a few studies have shown that the five people you spend the most time with represent you - so you need to decide - who do you want to be?
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.
Have you ever noticed the fact that once you begin to think about something, you see it everywhere? Anyone who has ever begun the search for a new automobile can attest, from the moment you Google it, you begin to pass that model in traffic everywhere. Of course, they were there the whole time; we simply didn't have them at top of mind.
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.
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.
People who lack the skill of discrimination tend to believe that everything is of relatively equal importance.
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.
Certainly, the human race can be fickle, and times do change, but overall, the barriers to bringing a product to market - and understanding what 'the market' wants - have remained unchanged.
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.
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.
A person who willingly goes into business for themselves - and intentionally seeks out 'solopreneurship' - is insane!
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.
At some point, you have to declare an idea dead and, if not a failure, then at least not a success.
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.
Your goal as an entrepreneur is to understand not only what your business does but the clients that it serves. If you really have your pulse on their needs and wants, then your 'absolute' failures are always going to have limits.
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.
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.
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.
Every life a legacy, every small business a school.
We all know that Ray Kroc founded the McDonald's franchise back in the 1950s, and it then became the most successful business enterprise in history.
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.
Most entrepreneurs are merely technicians with an entrepreneurial seizure. Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working IN your business rather than ON your business.
Build a company that changes the way things get done!
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.
For over forty years, I've been one of the most passionate believers in entrepreneurs. From day one, I've learned that too many small businesses are predicated on business models that the owner barely understands, and then, those same men and women are baffled when their business dreams are overwhelmed with struggles they never foresaw.
Most people view coffee and lunch as personal time, not deal-making time. Unless the person you're meeting understands that this is a working lunch, then they may not even think that this is a serious business conversation.
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.
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.
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.
