Once you have a picture of how you want your life to be, and you come to the realization that it’s more than just things to have and things to do, once you realize that what you and I really want is to have the room, the openness, to expand, to grow, to be more of ourselves, whatever that means, and to find out what that means is what’s most important to us, once you see that, you can then turn to the business that’s going to help you get there; you can then turn to the development of your Strategic Objective…In this context, your business is a means rather than an end, a vehicle to enrich your life rather than one that drains the life you have.
–Michael E. Gerber, in The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, Chapter 13 “Your Strategic Objective”.
