I just read The E-Myth Revisited after it having been recommended to me several times. In it Michael Gerber addresses the most prevalent problems of small businesses (e stands for entrepreneur) along with his solutions. It’s a breezy read, and, although a little too preachy at times, it’s a worthwhile read.

A few notes worth remembering:

• The Fatal Assumption: if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does the technical work
• Whereas before starting the business you were The Technician, now you must also be The Entrepreneur and The Manager
• The technician will manage by abdication whereas the manager will manage by delegation
• Tom Watson of IBM had a very clear vision of what the company would look like when it was done. “I then realized that, unless we began to act that way from the very beginning, we would never get there… At the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we did, discovered the disparity between where we were and where we had committed ourselves to be, and, at the start of the following day, set out to make up for the difference.“
• Your business is not your life