'Product life' is measured in months, not years, and as soon as you introduce a 'product,' understand that others in your business are going to reverse engineer it to duplicate the results after they circumnavigate the patents, the trademarks, and the intellectual property.

Michael Gerber

Organize around business functions, not people. Build systems within each business function. Let systems run the business and people run the systems. People come and go but the systems remain constant.

Michael Gerber

function running people

If your business requires your presence you don't have a business, you have a job.

Michael Gerber

your-presence ifs jobs

Great businesses are not built by extraordinary people but by ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

Michael Gerber

great-business ordinary people

You have to see the pattern, understand the order and experience the vision.

Michael Gerber

vision inspirational order

Systems permit ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results predictably.

Michael Gerber

achieve ordinary people

Most entrepreneurs fail because they are working IN their business rather than ON their business.

Michael Gerber

entrepreneur failing

I believe the difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next.

Michael Gerber

differences believe people

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

Michael Gerber

business happens

Systems run the business and people run the systems.

Michael Gerber

running people

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

Michael Gerber

cost matter people

If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!

Michael Gerber

worst jobs world

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.

Michael Gerber

vision practice people

The E Myth. Most entrepreneurs are merely technicians with an entrepreneurial seizure. Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working IN your business rather than ON your business.

Michael Gerber

decision business mistake

The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look. The entrepreneur in us is more concerned with discriminating between opportunities than he or she is with failing to see the opportunities.

Michael Gerber

decision opportunity people

The problem with most failing businesses is not that their owners don?t know enough about finance, marketing, management, and operations - they don?t, but those things are easy enough to learn - but that they spend their time and energy defending what they think they know. 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.

Michael Gerber

insatiable-need failure thinking

Building a World Class Company is a commitment to the integration of passion, purpose, and practice.

Michael Gerber

passion practice commitment

With no clear picture of how you wish your life to be, how on earth are you going to live it?

Michael Gerber

clear earth wish

What is your Primary Aim? Where is the script to make your dreams come true?

Michael Gerber

aim scripts dream

A true business opportunity is the that an entrepreneur invents to grow him or herself. Not to work in, but to work on.

Michael Gerber

entrepreneur business opportunity

A martial arts practice hall, a dojo, is a place you go to practice being the best you can be. But the true combat in a dojo is not between one person and another as most people believe it to be. The true combat in a martial arts practice hall is between the people within ourselves.

Michael Gerber

practice believe art