I am reading Michael Gerber’s Awakening the Entrepreneur Within: How Ordinary People Can Create Extraordinary Companies. I don’t buy his whole premise. However, I did think the “10 Pillars of Small Business Success” in chapter 13 are worth thinking about:

  1. All businesses require vision.
  2. All visions are both personal and impersonal.
  3. Every company is an organization of people, relationships, functions, a flow that can be charted.
  4. An organization is an organization of systems. All systems merge into one system.
  5. There is no such thing as customer service, only commitment.
  6. Master money, and everyone in your business must master money.
  7. Your people are not your business. Your business is its own reality.
  8. Your business is an idea.
  9. You know more about your business than anyone else.
  10. A business must mean something.