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.

If you expect to grow your business, you need to be plotting out your schedules days in advance. Until you get that most basic of steps orchestrated, you can never get to the critical steps that I outline in any one of dozens of books.

After decades of studying the men and women that make the decision to open their own Great, Growing Company, I'd have to say it comes down to the Vision they have for that business - do they expect to build the company or just have some income for the short term?

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.

People crave predictability, and when you design and use systems, you give people predictability. More importantly, when you build systems, they can help you orchestrate, and orchestration helps you create the habits that continuously improve the systems!

Everywhere you turn, there are lists and statistics. Any business, any sport, any hobby - we will try to categorize who is the best at some component of that endeavor. It's part human nature and part technology, since we have been conditioned to have access to answers and trivial problems at our fingertips.

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.

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.

If you ever hope to get ahead as an entrepreneur, the answer is not becoming an effective juggler, but in understanding and designing the systems to keep your team, not you, busy, busy, busy.

Your success starts with how you are able to get clients in the door, get their business, and leave them satisfied. If you, personally, have to spend too much time doing that, you have simply bought yourself a job, not an enterprise. Take hints from success stories all around you!

'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.

When I say, 'doin' it, doin' it, doin' it' to a group of small business owners, they immediately respond. They recognize the experience of doing the same things over and over. Keeping the business afloat without ever getting ahead. And it's more than frustrating - it's heartbreaking.

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.

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.

The more Strategic Work you do, the more effective, productive, and joyful the Tactical Work becomes.

If you make converting a lead into a sale harder than a trip to the local DMV, then you lose sales to someone else - with an inferior product - who can make it painless. Don't do that!

Unlike what most people think, entrepreneurs are not special people who know how to do special things that others don't. Entrepreneurs can be made, because we're all born with the potential - that special human quality - to create.

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.

Whether your dream is a $100,000 in sales or a million, the amount of work is likely the same - you'll still have 86,400 seconds each day, so why couldn't you imagine creating the company and enterprise that can fulfill every aspect of any dream you wish to have?

Your success has to be measured against yourself - a decade ago, last year, or yesterday.

Empirical and observational data along with a healthy dash of intuition often have to be combined as business owners begin to look outward, not inward, at what solutions they can provide to their customers.

I'm not really into the business of giving out tips, but if you are not using an all-encompassing software to integrate and sync your schedule, then you might be losing time. Most of these are free, and they can allow you to keep track of everything in one place and then access that from your computer, phone, or tablet.

Don't look at small business as a means to an end and a way to make money until the corporation hires you; look at it as a chance to create something of immeasurable value and beauty in a world that desperately needs it.

If you are planning to start a business, and if you want that business to have a hope of succeeding, be sure you are approaching your venture from a true Entrepreneurial Perspective.

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.

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.

Steve Jobs didn't seek solace among minimum wage workers. He sought it from highly educated men and women who understood and shared his focus on growth, technology, and company-building.

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 world of the small business owner is all about moving multiple items forward at once, and it's a fool's errand to believe one person can do it all when the shift comes from linear to parallel.

Being an entrepreneur is more than a matter of simply starting a business.

Growing your own business is great. Watching your ideas come to life, taking care of new customers and watching them become repeat customers, and successfully building your team is a feeling that can't be matched.

Your first job, as an owner and an entrepreneur, has to be to understand how the business is going to actually work.

The kind of work you do, when you do it, how much of it there is, and who you delegate it to are often the cause of the quasi-schizophrenic behavior seen in many business owners and entrepreneurs.

The entire idea of building a series of systems in a business is simply this - to create the tools that allow you, as a business owner, to increase productivity and get the job done. The idea behind these systems, of course, is to quit needing your judgement or input in every area of the business.

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?

Results transform the world, and a great dream creates results. That's what this thing we call 'business' is really all about.

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.

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.

It's fashionable to use terms like 'sales funnels' to describe the sales process for many companies, and it is true that the funnel design is very appropriate for the digital world, but despite all the prose written on sales funnels and the like, my question is still the same - when do you close your sales, and how long does that take?

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.

I've said it for four decades - work 'on' your business, not just 'in' your business!

If you haven't created the time as an owner to understand why people are choosing your model over your competition, then you are only managing the business that comes in the door, not actively seeking it out.

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.

Strategic Work is all about the big questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? Tactical Work is all about answers: This is the system we use to do each task. This is how we do it, how we measure it, how we monitor it.

There are three things that can be organized: time, space, and work. Note that, despite what many believe, you cannot organize people - you can only organize the work that people do.

A person who willingly goes into business for themselves - and intentionally seeks out 'solopreneurship' - is insane!

No matter what, once the doors are open for business, the entrepreneur has no choice but to be directing multiple attacks at once - raising money, writing software, prototyping, selling, collecting, training, and marketing.

When you consider how many people are really not good at communication in general and interviewing in specific, it's no wonder that many companies struggle to build high-quality partnerships - or even staffs.

Quit being 'busy' and start actively owning and operating your company, and you'll be able to understand where the money is coming from and how to make more of it.

People who lack the skill of discrimination tend to believe that everything is of relatively equal importance.