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.

Take the time to create an easy-flowing process that makes the sale, saves time, and gives you the best chance to scale a system that can pay off as you grow and scale.

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.

No matter what, the entrepreneur must strive to be above average and, at the same time, understand what is driving those averages they are seeking to beat. Take the time to understand and test the metrics you are using, and then you can not only set the average, you can exceed it.

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.

It is one thing to seek out new ways to grow your company and new potential streams of income from new services or products, but it is quite another to take on responsibilities that are far from your primary job as Entrepreneur.

Build a company that changes the way things get done!

Here's the problem with phones - they are a ready-made diversion from the considerably harder work of growing a business.

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.

If there is one thing that offers challenges to small companies as they start to grow and expand, it is the hiring process... every single area. The issues that can arise run the full spectrum, from 'finding good help' to that ubiquitous catch-all 'training' and everything in between.

At some point, you have to declare an idea dead and, if not a failure, then at least not a success.

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

Communication is the channel through which life is conveyed, through which ideas and the energy behind them are transmitted, and through which the mind, body, and spirit are merged into a force for right action.

If opening your own business is the dream, then it must start with a Dream - not only to understand what it is that you want to do, but also, how you are going to build something better than the same chaotic environment you just left.

No matter how you hire, ensuring the systems are in place to manage the process will be critical in allowing you to find the right people to carry the standards you set. Don't neglect that duty!

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.

One of the biggest challenges we have, as business owners and people, is that we think in linear terms.

The Big Dream of any entrepreneur really has very little to do with the entrepreneur. If you truly love repairing automobiles, chances are, you'll be a lousy business owner. Likewise, if you are fascinated by debits and credits, the dream of building an accounting firm with you at the helm is probably best left unfulfilled.

Nobody knew they needed a smart phone, an automobile, or even a cheeseburger from a drive through window.

Most people who go into business for themselves and, therefore, believe they are entrepreneurs, are doomed to struggle because they don't have a true Entrepreneurial Perspective. They have a Technician's Perspective.

The Entrepreneurial Perspective is absolutely necessary for the creation of a great, growing business.

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 with anything we do as entrepreneurs, researching how our businesses impact and influence our customers and our markets - and our world - is critical to building something of value as a business.

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.