The Most Successful Small Business In The World
By Michael Gerber,
John Wiley, 162 pages, $29.95
Built To Sell
By John Warrillow,
Flip Jet Media, 157 pages, $26.95
The most successful small business in the world, by definition, would be a large business. The corporate giants that dominate the world economy began as startups.
Many small-business people, however, don't want such super-sizing to occur for their own company. They prefer that the business remain small – even, in the majority of cases, that they continue to be one-person operations.
Small-business guru Michael Gerber doesn't have much time for those small businesses. In his classic book, The E-Myth, he insisted that most small-business people are not really entrepreneurs – even though they are routinely given that moniker – but actually “technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure.” They have built a business they can work in, continuing the same technical role they once carried out in a large company.
Instead, he urged them to work on their business, making it bigger by adding more and more people who could handle the work inside the business. They need to develop systems that can replicate – indeed, replace – the work they do, ushering the enterprise to a higher level. Think McDonald's.
In The Most Successful Small Business In the World, he builds on that premise by presenting 10 principles to make your small business shine big and bright:
1. A small business, built properly, can grow 10,000 times its size. But that means that from the moment you start your business, every decision must be shaped by the desire to grow large. “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?” Mr. Gerber asks.
2. A small business is no more effective than the idea upon which it is built. That means you must dream big. The idea you devise will be aggravating, because it demands you do something about it.
3. A small business is a system in which all parts contribute to the success or failure of the whole. The consumer parts, financial parts, strategic parts, and tactical parts – all the various aspects of the business must mesh together.
4. A small business must be sustainable through all economic conditions and in all markets. The recent downturn, of course, starkly reminded us that businesses which soar in good times aren't always sustainable when a turnaround hits. The business must be rock solid. It must find a better way to do things than any other competitor, and then constantly improve.
5. A small business is a school in which its employees are students, with the intention, will and determination to grow. “You don't find the right people, you create the right people. And to create the right people you need to put them through school,” he writes. It's a school of continuous learning, in which the entrepreneur is a voracious teacher.
6. A small business needs a higher goal than just making a sale. It must serve human beings in some ways. And that higher purpose can't just be a whim but must be fulfilled by action.
7. A small business is the fruit of a higher aim in the mind of the person who conceived it. The entrepreneur must fulfill his or her destiny through the business. Mr. Gerber believes that we were given this destiny when our soul entered our mother's body.
8. A small business possesses a life of its own, in the service of God, in whom it finds its reason. “We must rise above our needs, our self-interest, our greed, our hunger. We must pursue the impossible in everything we do. We must ask the question, ‘What would God have us do?'” he writes.
