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The E-myth Revisited
Small business coaching.
269 pages, Unknown Binding
First published September 1, 1985
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September 9, 2021
This book tells how to get your business to run without you. It shows how to work on your business, not in it. It explains how to get your people to work without your interference. It tells how to systematize so the business could be replicated 5,000 times. It shows how to do the work you love rather than the work you have to do.
The E-Myth (Entrepreneurial Myth) is that businesses are started by entrepreneurs seeking profit. In actuality, businesses are started by technicians (employees) who decide to work for themselves. The problem is they understand the technical work, not the business itself.
Gerber explains that we're all composed of 3 personalities. For your business to succeed, you must play each role:
1. The Entrepreneur: a future-focused visionary who pursues opportunities
2. The Manager: a past-focused worrier who plans and organizes
3. The Technician: a present-focused worker who concentrates on the task at hand
I had heard about The E-Myth and Michael Gerber in several places, and finally decided to read it when a successful business owner I respect recommended it so I could learn how to work on my business, not in it.
Gerber is at times long-winded and repetitive.
Notes
Most businesses are operated according to what the owner wants (a place to work freely), not according to what the business needs (growth and change).
If your business depends on you, you don't own a business, you own a job.
Franchise Prototype
Build your business as if it was the prototype for thousands of franchises. Attributes:
• operated by people with the lowest possible skill (not necessarily unskilled, just lowest possible)
• a place of impeccable order
• all work documented in operations manuals
• provides uniformly predictable service to the customer
Give your customer the service he wants systematically, not personally. Create a business whose results are system-dependent, rather than people-dependent. Create a system of experts instead of being the expert.
Your product is the feeling of the consumer has when they buy from you, not the commodity you sell. How the business interacts with the consumer is more important than what it sells.
Don’t “find a need and fill it.” Find a perceived need and fill it. This requires knowing your ideal customer’s psychographics.
Power Point Selling
1. Appointment Presentation: Set an appointment. Get the customer's emotional commitment by describing your product (feelings it gives customer) not the commodity (actual good or service).
2. Needs Analysis Presentation: Show the customer their frustration and how you can relieve it.
3. Solutions Presentation: Provide the rational armament to back up the customer's emotional commitment. Give the details of your product, and ask for the sale.
Selling isn't about closing, it's about opening; opening the customer to feel their frustration, and see the solution you can provide.
The E-Myth (Entrepreneurial Myth) is that businesses are started by entrepreneurs seeking profit. In actuality, businesses are started by technicians (employees) who decide to work for themselves. The problem is they understand the technical work, not the business itself.
Gerber explains that we're all composed of 3 personalities. For your business to succeed, you must play each role:
1. The Entrepreneur: a future-focused visionary who pursues opportunities
2. The Manager: a past-focused worrier who plans and organizes
3. The Technician: a present-focused worker who concentrates on the task at hand
I had heard about The E-Myth and Michael Gerber in several places, and finally decided to read it when a successful business owner I respect recommended it so I could learn how to work on my business, not in it.
Gerber is at times long-winded and repetitive.
Notes
Most businesses are operated according to what the owner wants (a place to work freely), not according to what the business needs (growth and change).
If your business depends on you, you don't own a business, you own a job.
Franchise Prototype
Build your business as if it was the prototype for thousands of franchises. Attributes:
• operated by people with the lowest possible skill (not necessarily unskilled, just lowest possible)
• a place of impeccable order
• all work documented in operations manuals
• provides uniformly predictable service to the customer
Give your customer the service he wants systematically, not personally. Create a business whose results are system-dependent, rather than people-dependent. Create a system of experts instead of being the expert.
Your product is the feeling of the consumer has when they buy from you, not the commodity you sell. How the business interacts with the consumer is more important than what it sells.
Don’t “find a need and fill it.” Find a perceived need and fill it. This requires knowing your ideal customer’s psychographics.
Power Point Selling
1. Appointment Presentation: Set an appointment. Get the customer's emotional commitment by describing your product (feelings it gives customer) not the commodity (actual good or service).
2. Needs Analysis Presentation: Show the customer their frustration and how you can relieve it.
3. Solutions Presentation: Provide the rational armament to back up the customer's emotional commitment. Give the details of your product, and ask for the sale.
Selling isn't about closing, it's about opening; opening the customer to feel their frustration, and see the solution you can provide.
December 2, 2007
About half a dozen important ideas buried in a mass of cloying, poorly written prose.
The 268 pages dedicated to this text could have been cut to 60 and the book would have been better for it. As it is, prepare to skim.
The author's habit of inventing characters that compliment him on his own ideas is a recurring and increasingly annoying technique. He also compliments his invented characters for their eloquence and drops repeated advertisements for his own company in the text. Classy.
The 268 pages dedicated to this text could have been cut to 60 and the book would have been better for it. As it is, prepare to skim.
The author's habit of inventing characters that compliment him on his own ideas is a recurring and increasingly annoying technique. He also compliments his invented characters for their eloquence and drops repeated advertisements for his own company in the text. Classy.
July 10, 2011
If it weren't for the condescending, overly-simplistic, overly-drawn out, incessantly repetitive tone of this book, it would be good--it does have meaningful concepts, it just should have been twenty pages long. I've spent years working in consulting where process works when people don't. This book took sixty pages to suggest that the poor overworked technician hire help. Another fifty pages to explain that you need good processes so that you can hire low-skilled people. That you define a role and work yourself out of it. Jeebus. These are bullet points, not multiple chapters. The worst offense is how he has a fictional conversation with a fictional business owner--and they lay massive complements on each other. I can just see the author writing these dialogues with a smitten sense of self satisfaction about how clever he was. Major turn-off and distraction from the content.
Good book for people who think they have a skill that they can monetize but have little to no corporate experience. I would not recommend it to anyone who has already been through the corporate America big business grinder.
Good book for people who think they have a skill that they can monetize but have little to no corporate experience. I would not recommend it to anyone who has already been through the corporate America big business grinder.
April 17, 2016
It felt like overnight MBA school. Or better.
A 5-star through and through. I never got my MBA. I've build a 6-figure business after resigning from my long corporate career, and I'm never going to go for the MBA, but listening to Michael Gerber's E-Myth Revisited book, I feel like I just went to overnight MBA School.
I listened to the book at 1.5x the speed over several flights and learned SO MUCH and I feel that even if you are a pro small business owner, you'll get a lot out of this book.
This is among my top 5 business books mainly because of the highlights below:
1. A lot of story and entertaining especially with Michael's entertaining, brilliantly paced narration.
2. The stories he tells are unforgettable - they make a great business point - and hilarious. i.e.) the fat guy vs the skinny guy in your head, the barber story, the technician, manager and entrepreneur battling it out, Sarah - the case study - hiring Harry and the downfall of that relationships and so on.
3. You learn so much about creating fool proof systems that would work without depending on who bought the business (if it's a franchisee). Gerber argues that if you have a prototype, such as The Franchise Prototype, then you have a system that makes your business work!
4. You get inspired, motivated, and learned how to run a small business in such a way that you can still love your life, love your work, make money and not be owned by it all.
5. This book was not your typical dry, boring, stiff business book, thank God! It spoke from a place of passion, soul, and true enthusiasm and yet it had tons of pragmatism in it.
6. Gerber's personal story, which he shares with openness and vulnerability. I loved it.
7. And pay attention to where he shares the main reason we fail in small business: It's that we bring our chaos into the business, so that we end up creating the worst job in the world, because we refuse to change!!!!
Some of my most favorite quotes from the book - and there were so many:
"The purpose of going into business is to get free of a job so you can create jobs for other people. The purpose of going into business is to expand beyond your current horizons so you can satisfy a need in the marketplace that has never been satisfied before, so you can live an expanded stimulating new life."
"Don't go working on the commodity, work on the business."
"We must ask: How must the business work for it to be a great business, to match our vision, to give us the lifestyle we dream?"
"In the business format franchise, the hamburger wasn't the product, McDonald's was!"
"How do you build s business that works effortlessly and predictably so that you can build the life you love? How do you get free of your business to live a fuller life? Your business cannot control you. You control it."
"Working ON your business, not IN it."
"The primary purpose of your life is NOT to serve your business. The purpose of your business is to serve your life."
"How can I run my business doing the work I Love to do rather than the work I Have to do?"
"Business, even a small business such as yours, is both an art and a science. And you need a process, a practice, a method and a system that works. "
"Practice the craft until the jewel appears one day. It is the work raised to near perfection that connects the crafts person to her art. Do it until the jewel appears when mastery is achieved."
"Life is what this business is about! Let business be your personal transformation."
"Great people create their lives actively while everyone else is waiting passively to see where their life takes them. Difference is living fully and intentionally or just existing."
"Keep the curtain UP at all costs, to be open, to be awake, to give up false beliefs."
"It's not your business you have to fear losing. It's yourself. It's you you're trying to find on the other side."
"The product is what your customer feels about your business, the experience of doing business with you."
"Selling is not closing. Selling is opening by going thru the questionnaire process and finding out what all you can offer him or her."
My biggest takeaway: "The entrepreneurial dream is a yearning for structure, for form, for control, an escape from chaos, and for something else as well: a yearning for a relationship between ourselves and the world in a way that is impossible to experience in a job!" Now he speaks my language. Hope you found this review inspiring enough to go read the book NOW!
A 5-star through and through. I never got my MBA. I've build a 6-figure business after resigning from my long corporate career, and I'm never going to go for the MBA, but listening to Michael Gerber's E-Myth Revisited book, I feel like I just went to overnight MBA School.
I listened to the book at 1.5x the speed over several flights and learned SO MUCH and I feel that even if you are a pro small business owner, you'll get a lot out of this book.
This is among my top 5 business books mainly because of the highlights below:
1. A lot of story and entertaining especially with Michael's entertaining, brilliantly paced narration.
2. The stories he tells are unforgettable - they make a great business point - and hilarious. i.e.) the fat guy vs the skinny guy in your head, the barber story, the technician, manager and entrepreneur battling it out, Sarah - the case study - hiring Harry and the downfall of that relationships and so on.
3. You learn so much about creating fool proof systems that would work without depending on who bought the business (if it's a franchisee). Gerber argues that if you have a prototype, such as The Franchise Prototype, then you have a system that makes your business work!
4. You get inspired, motivated, and learned how to run a small business in such a way that you can still love your life, love your work, make money and not be owned by it all.
5. This book was not your typical dry, boring, stiff business book, thank God! It spoke from a place of passion, soul, and true enthusiasm and yet it had tons of pragmatism in it.
6. Gerber's personal story, which he shares with openness and vulnerability. I loved it.
7. And pay attention to where he shares the main reason we fail in small business: It's that we bring our chaos into the business, so that we end up creating the worst job in the world, because we refuse to change!!!!
Some of my most favorite quotes from the book - and there were so many:
"The purpose of going into business is to get free of a job so you can create jobs for other people. The purpose of going into business is to expand beyond your current horizons so you can satisfy a need in the marketplace that has never been satisfied before, so you can live an expanded stimulating new life."
"Don't go working on the commodity, work on the business."
"We must ask: How must the business work for it to be a great business, to match our vision, to give us the lifestyle we dream?"
"In the business format franchise, the hamburger wasn't the product, McDonald's was!"
"How do you build s business that works effortlessly and predictably so that you can build the life you love? How do you get free of your business to live a fuller life? Your business cannot control you. You control it."
"Working ON your business, not IN it."
"The primary purpose of your life is NOT to serve your business. The purpose of your business is to serve your life."
"How can I run my business doing the work I Love to do rather than the work I Have to do?"
"Business, even a small business such as yours, is both an art and a science. And you need a process, a practice, a method and a system that works. "
"Practice the craft until the jewel appears one day. It is the work raised to near perfection that connects the crafts person to her art. Do it until the jewel appears when mastery is achieved."
"Life is what this business is about! Let business be your personal transformation."
"Great people create their lives actively while everyone else is waiting passively to see where their life takes them. Difference is living fully and intentionally or just existing."
"Keep the curtain UP at all costs, to be open, to be awake, to give up false beliefs."
"It's not your business you have to fear losing. It's yourself. It's you you're trying to find on the other side."
"The product is what your customer feels about your business, the experience of doing business with you."
"Selling is not closing. Selling is opening by going thru the questionnaire process and finding out what all you can offer him or her."
My biggest takeaway: "The entrepreneurial dream is a yearning for structure, for form, for control, an escape from chaos, and for something else as well: a yearning for a relationship between ourselves and the world in a way that is impossible to experience in a job!" Now he speaks my language. Hope you found this review inspiring enough to go read the book NOW!
August 4, 2016
Maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe, because I'm a writing teacher, this book bothered me more than it should have.
To be fair, there are some good (though not groundbreaking) business ideas here, mostly common sense concepts that are good to refresh and reemphasize.
But I found a few of Gerber's writing habits irksome. His needless repetition belittles his audience. His habit of belaboring a point by adding to it a litany of fragments that simply restate the concept was tiresome. His long, rambling, and oddly, overly detailed autobiographical anecdotes were unnecessary and often unrelatable. But the main concepts also confounded me at times.
The E-Myth is that, inside each business owner are three warring factions: the Entrepreneur, the Manager, and the Technician. Until we get those three personalities to cohabitate peacefully, we won't be successful in business. Gerber has a habit of capitalizing things, as if to coin a phrase for an already well-known concept and brand it as his own. Be prepared for a lot of that. Make no mistake: if your business is failing, he says, you are the problem. So this is primarily a concept piece, a philosophical work on the paradigm he feels successful business owners should take, not a how-to manual.
For him, business is a proving ground-- a dojo of sorts-- in which a man can test his inner mettle, and create a world that is ordered, and gives him what we all crave: relationship, order, and "more life." It's an exercise of his life purpose, his inner humanity. Okay. I'll give him that.
But, having now read the entire book, I can say it reads like a cautionary tale against going into business. One of his big ideas is the Franchise Prototype, guided by an infinitely detailed Operations Manual with a scientifically proven set of systems for each and every thing your business does (from cleaning toilets to selling widgets to greeting customers and answering phones). Just the thought of literally researching and systematizing (and organizing and assigning tasks to specific people) for every.single.thing we do from making coffee to filing invoices sounds like a monolithis task. But he claims that, with the right system for Absolutely Everything, you can easily train and hire total nincompoops (he is very clear that you don't need experience or talent in your employees-- in fact, experienced and talented employees are way more trouble and expense than they're worth, and are still as unpredictable as any other human), and your customer will get the best possible experience, every time.
He takes his concept from the franchise models of places like McDonald's, which, though certainly not a model of quality, definitely stands as a model of consistency. Give the customer a consistent experience, Gerber urges, and he will feel in control.
This is where the difference between pre-9/11 American business and out post-9/11 culture is most apparent. He gives a sample sales script (according to the Systems mentality, every interaction between customer and employee should follow an unvarying script) that is painful. It sounds like a TV announcer from the 1950's. But Gerber cautions that if, after careful research into the demographics and psychographics of your chosen customer, you create a marketing system, use it "as long as it works," and then when it stops working, change it. Your business is dynamic, and all of your employees should be looking for ways to innovate and improve systems. Naturally, because hiring untalented nincompoops who like to follow a script naturally spawns a team of proactive, forward-thinking innovators. I found that a little confounding, too.
In fact, Gerber is from a different world: one filled with honest, hard-working employees just waiting for a Boss to Believe In. And once they buy into his Big Idea (the "Game" as Gerber calls it), they will play that game with gusto because they love and look up to him. I have rarely met a person in my generation who venerates his boss like this.
But maybe that's why Gerber and I don't click. I'm a Gen-Xer in post-9/11 America, and he's a hippie poet who smoked weed in his VW bus until he had to go corporate to make a living. He's made a great life for himself at E-Myth Worldwide, and I'm happy for him. I'm grateful for the bits of this book I will use as reminders. I probably won't read another of his books.
To be fair, there are some good (though not groundbreaking) business ideas here, mostly common sense concepts that are good to refresh and reemphasize.
But I found a few of Gerber's writing habits irksome. His needless repetition belittles his audience. His habit of belaboring a point by adding to it a litany of fragments that simply restate the concept was tiresome. His long, rambling, and oddly, overly detailed autobiographical anecdotes were unnecessary and often unrelatable. But the main concepts also confounded me at times.
The E-Myth is that, inside each business owner are three warring factions: the Entrepreneur, the Manager, and the Technician. Until we get those three personalities to cohabitate peacefully, we won't be successful in business. Gerber has a habit of capitalizing things, as if to coin a phrase for an already well-known concept and brand it as his own. Be prepared for a lot of that. Make no mistake: if your business is failing, he says, you are the problem. So this is primarily a concept piece, a philosophical work on the paradigm he feels successful business owners should take, not a how-to manual.
For him, business is a proving ground-- a dojo of sorts-- in which a man can test his inner mettle, and create a world that is ordered, and gives him what we all crave: relationship, order, and "more life." It's an exercise of his life purpose, his inner humanity. Okay. I'll give him that.
But, having now read the entire book, I can say it reads like a cautionary tale against going into business. One of his big ideas is the Franchise Prototype, guided by an infinitely detailed Operations Manual with a scientifically proven set of systems for each and every thing your business does (from cleaning toilets to selling widgets to greeting customers and answering phones). Just the thought of literally researching and systematizing (and organizing and assigning tasks to specific people) for every.single.thing we do from making coffee to filing invoices sounds like a monolithis task. But he claims that, with the right system for Absolutely Everything, you can easily train and hire total nincompoops (he is very clear that you don't need experience or talent in your employees-- in fact, experienced and talented employees are way more trouble and expense than they're worth, and are still as unpredictable as any other human), and your customer will get the best possible experience, every time.
He takes his concept from the franchise models of places like McDonald's, which, though certainly not a model of quality, definitely stands as a model of consistency. Give the customer a consistent experience, Gerber urges, and he will feel in control.
This is where the difference between pre-9/11 American business and out post-9/11 culture is most apparent. He gives a sample sales script (according to the Systems mentality, every interaction between customer and employee should follow an unvarying script) that is painful. It sounds like a TV announcer from the 1950's. But Gerber cautions that if, after careful research into the demographics and psychographics of your chosen customer, you create a marketing system, use it "as long as it works," and then when it stops working, change it. Your business is dynamic, and all of your employees should be looking for ways to innovate and improve systems. Naturally, because hiring untalented nincompoops who like to follow a script naturally spawns a team of proactive, forward-thinking innovators. I found that a little confounding, too.
In fact, Gerber is from a different world: one filled with honest, hard-working employees just waiting for a Boss to Believe In. And once they buy into his Big Idea (the "Game" as Gerber calls it), they will play that game with gusto because they love and look up to him. I have rarely met a person in my generation who venerates his boss like this.
But maybe that's why Gerber and I don't click. I'm a Gen-Xer in post-9/11 America, and he's a hippie poet who smoked weed in his VW bus until he had to go corporate to make a living. He's made a great life for himself at E-Myth Worldwide, and I'm happy for him. I'm grateful for the bits of this book I will use as reminders. I probably won't read another of his books.
November 4, 2018
I skimmed this book five years ago after hearing about it from some North Point staff members. I thought I understood the basic ideas, so for the last five years the book sat on my shelf. Until this week. I had a chance to listen to the book this week, and will likely add it as required reading for all our new staff members.
Great lessons:
1) Most people get into business (ministry?) because they like doing something and wish they could do it for themselves. Naively, they think they'll have more flexibility or earn more of the profit. Seldom do they consider the start-up costs, the risk and the need for discipline or systems. These people, says the author, are technicians. They have a technical skill, e.g., baking pies (preaching) but lack either the management tools or the margin to initiate improvements and grow the business.
2) As a result, most--up to 80%--of new business start-ups fail, and fail miserably.
3) Enter systems. Systems allow one to scale and automate and refine in a way that a single individual often cannot. Imagine, says the author, designing a business model that can be replicated 5000 times! Engineer as much of the operations as possible to be fool-proof. Break down the components into small pieces that can be managed by someone with very little innate ability and/or training.
4) Be cautious of talent. Too often, hiring "talented" managers can screw up the system because they begin to turn dials and make changes. It may seem counter-intuitive, but these self-starters can really cause big problems quickly. They have a role, but it's in the R&D department, not on the execution side.
5) Turn training into a game. Make it fun for new staff to learn what is expected.
6) Measure everything . . . so you can diagnose more efficiently.
7) Script everything . . . so you can more easily achieve consistent/predictable results, and maintain the agreed-to standard.
8) Check-lists are common-sense necessary for anything you plan to do at least twice. Get over the feeling these are for idiots; they ensure that they right things are done in the right order.
9) There are sales techniques (scripts) that work. Period.
10) This is a book I'll probably add to my "Every January" list for the next few years alongside Acts, The Effective Executive, Getting Things Done, The Art of War, etc.
Great lessons:
1) Most people get into business (ministry?) because they like doing something and wish they could do it for themselves. Naively, they think they'll have more flexibility or earn more of the profit. Seldom do they consider the start-up costs, the risk and the need for discipline or systems. These people, says the author, are technicians. They have a technical skill, e.g., baking pies (preaching) but lack either the management tools or the margin to initiate improvements and grow the business.
2) As a result, most--up to 80%--of new business start-ups fail, and fail miserably.
3) Enter systems. Systems allow one to scale and automate and refine in a way that a single individual often cannot. Imagine, says the author, designing a business model that can be replicated 5000 times! Engineer as much of the operations as possible to be fool-proof. Break down the components into small pieces that can be managed by someone with very little innate ability and/or training.
4) Be cautious of talent. Too often, hiring "talented" managers can screw up the system because they begin to turn dials and make changes. It may seem counter-intuitive, but these self-starters can really cause big problems quickly. They have a role, but it's in the R&D department, not on the execution side.
5) Turn training into a game. Make it fun for new staff to learn what is expected.
6) Measure everything . . . so you can diagnose more efficiently.
7) Script everything . . . so you can more easily achieve consistent/predictable results, and maintain the agreed-to standard.
8) Check-lists are common-sense necessary for anything you plan to do at least twice. Get over the feeling these are for idiots; they ensure that they right things are done in the right order.
9) There are sales techniques (scripts) that work. Period.
10) This is a book I'll probably add to my "Every January" list for the next few years alongside Acts, The Effective Executive, Getting Things Done, The Art of War, etc.
January 29, 2008
This is a fine book showing some of the flaws of small businesses and why so many fail. The author uses a fictional small business owner who started a pie shop and running herself ragged. She has a great gift in making pies but is burning herself out. She was thinking about how she her job was making and selling pies when her business could and should be so much more.
Successful companies don’t actually sell the products that they make. They fulfill an emotional need of their clients. For instance, Southwest Airlines is not selling airline tickets but a fun way to travel. Disney is not selling you a Mickey Mouse hat but to experience having the innocence of child again. Harley-Davidson is not selling you a motorcycle – but a membership to a rebellious, unbridled culture.
My mind went racing while I thought of the four or five companies on my mind.
This book finally made some sense about why someone would write a book telling the world their secrets. The author possibly has hit a ceiling on the amount of time he can invest – the amount of money he can make. The only way he could make more money is to leverage himself in making CD’s, doing lectures, and yes, writing books.
The third major point this book made was about systems. I really dislike systems in the workplace because they dehumanize the person. However, the author made some of the best arguments against this notion. I’m forced to rethink my ideas on this subject.
But if you are a small business owner or are looking to become one, you really have to read this.
Successful companies don’t actually sell the products that they make. They fulfill an emotional need of their clients. For instance, Southwest Airlines is not selling airline tickets but a fun way to travel. Disney is not selling you a Mickey Mouse hat but to experience having the innocence of child again. Harley-Davidson is not selling you a motorcycle – but a membership to a rebellious, unbridled culture.
My mind went racing while I thought of the four or five companies on my mind.
This book finally made some sense about why someone would write a book telling the world their secrets. The author possibly has hit a ceiling on the amount of time he can invest – the amount of money he can make. The only way he could make more money is to leverage himself in making CD’s, doing lectures, and yes, writing books.
The third major point this book made was about systems. I really dislike systems in the workplace because they dehumanize the person. However, the author made some of the best arguments against this notion. I’m forced to rethink my ideas on this subject.
But if you are a small business owner or are looking to become one, you really have to read this.
February 16, 2016
The The E-Myth Revisited deals with two major misconceptions about running a business: that every small business owner is an entrepreneur and the assumption that working on your business is the same as working in your business. This book is an absolute must-read for business owners and while on occasion the writing is a little cheesy there are plenty of really important topics discussed in a clear, informative manner, which will help you grow your business in a productive and successful way.
June 2, 2014
I found this book poorly written and condescending. The formula Gerber prescribes for struggling small business owners could have been easily explained in a few bullet points without the endless anecdotes about "Sarah's Pie Shop" and annoying made-up terms. (Stop trying to make Turn-Key Revolution happen! It's not going to happen.)
December 15, 2013
This book is appears in all must-read-business-books-lists.
Well, not on mine.
While I agree that standardization of processes can go long way, the McDonald's of the world already exist. Trying to create another one, is as likely as to aiming to be the next Facebook.
The way I work in the corporate world, and the way I see myself working in an enterprise of my own, isn't factory work, follow the manual and nothing but the manual, don't think just execute bogus.
We're human working for humans, everyone is different, each need is unique, each problem as its solution. While the approach should at least to have standard set of principals, I don't see myself hiring other people to serve as automatons...
Maybe I missed the purpose of the book.
Or maybe I'm just nayve.
Well, not on mine.
While I agree that standardization of processes can go long way, the McDonald's of the world already exist. Trying to create another one, is as likely as to aiming to be the next Facebook.
The way I work in the corporate world, and the way I see myself working in an enterprise of my own, isn't factory work, follow the manual and nothing but the manual, don't think just execute bogus.
We're human working for humans, everyone is different, each need is unique, each problem as its solution. While the approach should at least to have standard set of principals, I don't see myself hiring other people to serve as automatons...
Maybe I missed the purpose of the book.
Or maybe I'm just nayve.
March 6, 2017
The principles in this book are very good, and I think Gerber nails the reasons why so many small businesses fail. The distinction between the roles of Entrepreneur, Technician and Manager are well thought out and reflect reality.
The systems Gerber recommends putting into place are stringent, and I feel it would be difficult to transfer them to certain types of business - service businesses, and highly skilled technical businesses for example. It's very much geared to businesses that provide goods and could theoretically operate a franchise model. Nevertheless, some good points and ideas about business development, attitudes and systems are made.
The downside to the book is that it's extremely wordy. Ideas are repeated in more than one way, in a roundabout style. The ideas are then reinforced in the semi-fictionalised example of a lady in a pie shop, and I didn't feel this added a lot, especially as it tended to regurgitate the chapter with no new ideas. If you can ignore the wordy bits, the underlying ideas are worth reading the book for.
The systems Gerber recommends putting into place are stringent, and I feel it would be difficult to transfer them to certain types of business - service businesses, and highly skilled technical businesses for example. It's very much geared to businesses that provide goods and could theoretically operate a franchise model. Nevertheless, some good points and ideas about business development, attitudes and systems are made.
The downside to the book is that it's extremely wordy. Ideas are repeated in more than one way, in a roundabout style. The ideas are then reinforced in the semi-fictionalised example of a lady in a pie shop, and I didn't feel this added a lot, especially as it tended to regurgitate the chapter with no new ideas. If you can ignore the wordy bits, the underlying ideas are worth reading the book for.
February 4, 2009
I read this a few years ago. It was the text for one of my husband's business classes. He said it was a good book... and I said, "WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?" (qualifies as one of the most rare phrases to escape his gorgeous lips) So I had to read it, see.
It's actually pretty amazing. I'm betting I'll never start my own business, because the things I do tend to be less-marketable services and commodities. Reading, doing laundry, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer... Don't think you get paid for any of those things. However, if I wanted to start my own business, hypothetically... I now feel entirely qualified to do so.
Happy entrepreneuring!
It's actually pretty amazing. I'm betting I'll never start my own business, because the things I do tend to be less-marketable services and commodities. Reading, doing laundry, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer... Don't think you get paid for any of those things. However, if I wanted to start my own business, hypothetically... I now feel entirely qualified to do so.
Happy entrepreneuring!
January 23, 2015
This book is an absolute MUST READ for anyone looking to start or manage a business. It's evergreen wisdom that will give you a nice foundation how to plan your business and the proper way to manage it. Even if you don't wanna start your own company this book will definitely help you understand more about business in general and how the structure of a stable company works. This is a really valuable book full of wisdom, don't miss out!
February 28, 2021
This book has held up better than you'd expect. I read this not as someone who plans on becoming an entrepreneur but someone who just likes a good business book that can challenge my old modes of thinking.
That being said, it reads a little cheesy at times like it's written as a fable. And some of the advice truly is outdated. At one point Gerber cites the statistics on making a sale when human touch is involved and therefore you should make a point to have a small moment of contact or touch with every customer. ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DO THIS. And in the section on color and the psychology of color in marketing he spends so long talking about how IBM knew what they were doing when they chose their shade of blue and all the research on blue, which I don't think is wrong, but then went on to talk about how disastrous it would have been if they'd gone with orange. Well in 2021 we are all aware of Amazon and orange doesn't seem to have hurt them one bit. AWS, honey. Look it up.
That being said, it reads a little cheesy at times like it's written as a fable. And some of the advice truly is outdated. At one point Gerber cites the statistics on making a sale when human touch is involved and therefore you should make a point to have a small moment of contact or touch with every customer. ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DO THIS. And in the section on color and the psychology of color in marketing he spends so long talking about how IBM knew what they were doing when they chose their shade of blue and all the research on blue, which I don't think is wrong, but then went on to talk about how disastrous it would have been if they'd gone with orange. Well in 2021 we are all aware of Amazon and orange doesn't seem to have hurt them one bit. AWS, honey. Look it up.
October 22, 2020
This is probably the fourth or fifth time I have sat down to try to read "The E-Myth". My past attempts have always ended in abandonment, but this book is so highly regarded as a business classic that I decided to grit my teeth and to power all the way through to the end this time, no matter what.
Having done so, I am confirmed in my belief that this book does not deserve all the praise it has been showered with. I remember now why it was so hard to finish - the book has a single point which it keeps hitting the reader over the head with, for far too long, and with far too little imagination.
The beginning of the book is the best part. It points out something which is non-obvious, but rings true as soon as you read it: that most small businesses are not started by "entrepreneurs". Rather, they are started by "technicians" - as in, people who have some kind of technical skill.
The typical foray into small business ownership begins when a technician has what Gerber calls an "entrepreneurial seizure". For instance, a hairdresser quits working for someone else and starts a hair salon of their own. Trouble is, although these technicians know how to do the technical work, they are often ill-equipped to deal with the new and different challeges that come with running a small business. That's a pretty good statement of the problem, so I'll give "The E-Myth" credit there.
But reading further, I became highly skeptical when Gerber argues that this one thing - technicians being unable or unwilling to do entrepreneurial work - is the main reason behind why most small businesses fail. Surely I thought to myself, *any number of things* can be the death-knell. For example, the cause of failure can as simple as not offering a product which enough customers want, or not being able to sell it at a high enough price. But no, this is skipped over entirely.
To me, this is the core problem with "The E-Myth" - it says that every business problem stems from a failure to build systems. And every solution begins with deploying the book's "keys to success". It's classic guru advice: *success will be yours, if only you do this one thing*. Anyone with an ounce of experience will recognise that reality is a lot more detailed than that.
Another thing that was eyebrow-raising was the "conversation" between Gerber and the woman who owns the pie shop: "Sarah". Sarah has a problem that many small business owners can identify with - she loves doing the technical work (in her case, baking pies), but she hates doing all the other stuff that come with owning her own shop.
Sarah becomes despondent at the idea of having to spend her time doing entrepreneurial work. After all, she loves baking pies - not sales, managing, and so on. So Sarah asks Gerber point blank: "What should I do if I just want to bake pies?", and swiftly gets told that in this case she should shut her business down and get a job.
But then, just a few pages later, Sarah does a 180 degree turn and becomes eager to learn how to become an entrepreneur! It's a stunning, and quite unbelievable transformation... which makes me suspect that "Sarah" is not really based on an actual person at all - rather, she is probably a device which Gerber invented in order to cast himself in the role of the all-knowing expert. I don't know this for sure, but it's what it felt like when reading.
Earlier, I mentioned the lack of imagination in "The E-Myth". It seems to me that there are many ways to build a fulfilling life, beyond either "getting a job" on the one hand, or building a "McDonald's" type business on the other (McDonald's is the example that Gerber consistently holds up as the paragon of business model success, which all readers ought to try to emulate). You can sell your time as a freelancer, you can become the best in the world at your craft and charge a lot for what you do, you can build a startup and scale through software rather than through franchising. All of these can be good options for different people at different times - but it doesn't fit Gerber's cookie-cutter approach, so no mention of any of them.
So "The E-Myth" is a several-hundred-page book with one decent piece of advice: if you want to be an entrepreneur, you should *build systems*.
- This will ensure a consistent, repeatable customer experience.
- It also means each individual staff member becomes more dispensable (because they are a cog in the wheel, rather than a lynchpin), which gives the business owner more power.
If you understand that, then you don't really need to read the rest.
Having done so, I am confirmed in my belief that this book does not deserve all the praise it has been showered with. I remember now why it was so hard to finish - the book has a single point which it keeps hitting the reader over the head with, for far too long, and with far too little imagination.
The beginning of the book is the best part. It points out something which is non-obvious, but rings true as soon as you read it: that most small businesses are not started by "entrepreneurs". Rather, they are started by "technicians" - as in, people who have some kind of technical skill.
The typical foray into small business ownership begins when a technician has what Gerber calls an "entrepreneurial seizure". For instance, a hairdresser quits working for someone else and starts a hair salon of their own. Trouble is, although these technicians know how to do the technical work, they are often ill-equipped to deal with the new and different challeges that come with running a small business. That's a pretty good statement of the problem, so I'll give "The E-Myth" credit there.
But reading further, I became highly skeptical when Gerber argues that this one thing - technicians being unable or unwilling to do entrepreneurial work - is the main reason behind why most small businesses fail. Surely I thought to myself, *any number of things* can be the death-knell. For example, the cause of failure can as simple as not offering a product which enough customers want, or not being able to sell it at a high enough price. But no, this is skipped over entirely.
To me, this is the core problem with "The E-Myth" - it says that every business problem stems from a failure to build systems. And every solution begins with deploying the book's "keys to success". It's classic guru advice: *success will be yours, if only you do this one thing*. Anyone with an ounce of experience will recognise that reality is a lot more detailed than that.
Another thing that was eyebrow-raising was the "conversation" between Gerber and the woman who owns the pie shop: "Sarah". Sarah has a problem that many small business owners can identify with - she loves doing the technical work (in her case, baking pies), but she hates doing all the other stuff that come with owning her own shop.
Sarah becomes despondent at the idea of having to spend her time doing entrepreneurial work. After all, she loves baking pies - not sales, managing, and so on. So Sarah asks Gerber point blank: "What should I do if I just want to bake pies?", and swiftly gets told that in this case she should shut her business down and get a job.
But then, just a few pages later, Sarah does a 180 degree turn and becomes eager to learn how to become an entrepreneur! It's a stunning, and quite unbelievable transformation... which makes me suspect that "Sarah" is not really based on an actual person at all - rather, she is probably a device which Gerber invented in order to cast himself in the role of the all-knowing expert. I don't know this for sure, but it's what it felt like when reading.
Earlier, I mentioned the lack of imagination in "The E-Myth". It seems to me that there are many ways to build a fulfilling life, beyond either "getting a job" on the one hand, or building a "McDonald's" type business on the other (McDonald's is the example that Gerber consistently holds up as the paragon of business model success, which all readers ought to try to emulate). You can sell your time as a freelancer, you can become the best in the world at your craft and charge a lot for what you do, you can build a startup and scale through software rather than through franchising. All of these can be good options for different people at different times - but it doesn't fit Gerber's cookie-cutter approach, so no mention of any of them.
So "The E-Myth" is a several-hundred-page book with one decent piece of advice: if you want to be an entrepreneur, you should *build systems*.
- This will ensure a consistent, repeatable customer experience.
- It also means each individual staff member becomes more dispensable (because they are a cog in the wheel, rather than a lynchpin), which gives the business owner more power.
If you understand that, then you don't really need to read the rest.
October 24, 2021
Wow I've wanted to read this for 5 years lol It was only until __ brought it to my priority to reads list that I made it happen.
I feel like I can apply these lessons I learned from this book to my small business - to an extent. I didn't really need to read near the end where he talks about HR and dealing with your team because it isn't really necessary being a youtube vlogger :P But good knowledge all round.
I like the beginning where he talks about how every new business owner wears three hats - the technician, the manager, and the entrepreneur. And that all three of these bosses are constantly fighting inside of you and you have to give them equally as much as attention as the other to maintain a healthy balance in your business. It's just as important to do the work as it is to manage and dream about it's future. Then he goes on into a lot of what I've learned in business school which is have a main purpose, hire the right people, etc etc.
I feel like I can apply these lessons I learned from this book to my small business - to an extent. I didn't really need to read near the end where he talks about HR and dealing with your team because it isn't really necessary being a youtube vlogger :P But good knowledge all round.
I like the beginning where he talks about how every new business owner wears three hats - the technician, the manager, and the entrepreneur. And that all three of these bosses are constantly fighting inside of you and you have to give them equally as much as attention as the other to maintain a healthy balance in your business. It's just as important to do the work as it is to manage and dream about it's future. Then he goes on into a lot of what I've learned in business school which is have a main purpose, hire the right people, etc etc.
March 20, 2021
There is some really good content buried in this book... But to find it, you'll have to wade through some sappy, cheesy, self-congratulatory dialogs with an imaginary owner of a new bakery business, plus a number of pseudo-philosophical nonsense rants on the beauty of life and business. Also, as you get deeper into the book, each chapter contains less and less valuable content, but more and more sloppy pitches for the author's consulting company; by the time you get to the marketing chapter, it's basically a few pages of filler, followed by "At Michael E Gerber Companies, we can help you with marketing..." Bleh.
That said, there really is some good stuff here, so as long as you're good at skimming past the BS, it's a worthwhile read for any entrepreneur. Here are some of my favorite insights:
(1) "Everybody who goes into business is actually three-people-in-one: The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and the Technician." Many people who start businesses are Technicians: they are experts at doing the technical work of a business and they figure they can create a company around those skills. But, as it turns out, the "technical work of a business and a business that does technical work are two totally different things!" To succeed as a business owner, you'll need not only the skills of a Technician, but also the skills of an Entrepreneur and a Manager.
(2) One of the key differences between the Technician and the Entrepreneur is what they build as a product. To the Technician, the product is whatever the company delivers and sells to a customer (i.e., the widgets). But to the Entrepreneur, the business itself is the product. Whereas the Technician works in the business, the Entrepreneur works on the business. And if you don't have the latter, you can't succeed, no matter how good you are at the former.
(3) "The true product of a business is the business itself." I think this is the most important insight in this entire book: to think of the business itself as a product, as a machine that can consistently and repeatedly produce a certain result. And that machine should work without you, or any specific individual involved. The book pitches this as a "franchise" concept—where you create a reusable blueprint for your business, so you can stamp out franchises all over the place—but even if you don't plan on actually franchising anything, to be successful, you still need to build your business in exactly this way.
"What Ray Kroc understood at McDonald's was that the hamburger wasn't his product. McDonald's was."
(4) The key insight of this book is more or less the same insight as in the book Built to Sell: you should build your business as if you were going to sell it to someone, even if you have no plans to sell it whatsoever. And a business that's optimized for selling is just like a business that's optimized for franchising: it's a machine, a repeatable process, one that can be executed by anyone, and not just you (since you won't be involved after selling!).
"Forced to create a business that worked in order to sell it, he also created a business that would work once it's sold, no matter who bought it. Armed with that realization, he set about the task of creating a foolproof, predictable business. A systems-dependent business, not a people-dependent business. A business that could work without him. Unlike most small business owners before him—and since—Ray Kroc went to work on his business, not in it. He began to think about his business like an engineer working on a pre-production prototype of a mass-produceable product."
(5) One of the keys to building a "franchise" (even if you don't plan on franchising) is to find a way to build a business that is systems-dependent rather than people-dependent. That is, your business should be able to deliver results to the customer, not based on hiring employees who are world's greatest experts and can therefore do extraordinary things to get those results—experts are rare and expensive, and their performance fluctuates (e.g., depending on mood or motivation), so it's hard to scale a business around them—but based on having the right system in place that allows regular employees to consistently get those same results.
"It is literally impossible to produce a consistent result in a business that depends on extraordinary people. No business can do it for long. And no extraordinary business tries to! Because every extraordinary business knows that when you intentionally build your business around the skills of ordinary people, you will be forced to ask the difficult questions about how to produce a result without the extraordinary ones. You will be forced to find a system that leverages your ordinary people to the point where they can produce extraordinary results over and over again."
(6) The book defines a Business Development Program, which is a step by step guide for how to systematize every aspect of your business. It consists of 7 steps:
1. Your Primary Aim
2. Your Strategic Objective
3. Your Organizational Strategy
4. Your Management Strategy
5. Your People Strategy
6. Your Marketing Strategy
7. Your Systems Strategy
As the book gets further along, the content gets thinner and thinner, so I'll only touch on a few of these below.
(7) Primary Aim: imagine you're dead. Now, imagine people are attending your funeral, and someone is saying a eulogy for you. What would you want them to say about your life? What's the story they would tell? That's the Primary Aim. I found this a very powerful way to think of what I want to do with my life (and not just business)!
(8) Strategic Objective: What product you create and what you sell might are not the same thing! That is, what your customer walks out of the store with, and what the customer feels they've bought are typically very different:
"Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon and an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur, once said about his company: 'In the factory Revlon manufactures cosmetics, but in the store Revlon sells hope.'"
The reality is that most companies aren't selling products, but emotions and other intangibles: they are selling hope, time, peace of mind, power, love, etc. Knowing what you're really selling is critical to building a successful business.
(9) Organizational Strategy: "Most companies organize around personalities rather than around functions. That is, around people rather than accountabilities and responsibilities. The result is almost always chaos." One of the really powerful ideas in this book is that, right when you start your company, before there are any employees, you create an org chart for what the company will look like in the future. Within this org chart, you define every role, every title, and every responsibility. In the early days, the co-founders fulfill all these roles. Your goal is to try these roles out, figure out how to make each one work, record and systematize the process, and then hire other people to fill these roles, following your system, while you move up to managing them. Rinse and repeat until the whole org chart is filled out by others, and they are following the system you've created for them.
(10) People strategy. Once you have a system in place, the idea is to present it to new hires, on day one, a bit like introducing them to the rules of a game.
"There is nothing more exciting than a well-conceived game. That is what the very best businesses represent to the people who create them: a game to be played in which the rules symbolize the idea you, the owner, have about the world. If your idea is a positive one, your business will reflect that optimism. If your idea is a negative one, your business will reflect that as well. In this context, the degree to which your people 'do what you want' is the degree to which they buy into your game."
That said, there really is some good stuff here, so as long as you're good at skimming past the BS, it's a worthwhile read for any entrepreneur. Here are some of my favorite insights:
(1) "Everybody who goes into business is actually three-people-in-one: The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and the Technician." Many people who start businesses are Technicians: they are experts at doing the technical work of a business and they figure they can create a company around those skills. But, as it turns out, the "technical work of a business and a business that does technical work are two totally different things!" To succeed as a business owner, you'll need not only the skills of a Technician, but also the skills of an Entrepreneur and a Manager.
(2) One of the key differences between the Technician and the Entrepreneur is what they build as a product. To the Technician, the product is whatever the company delivers and sells to a customer (i.e., the widgets). But to the Entrepreneur, the business itself is the product. Whereas the Technician works in the business, the Entrepreneur works on the business. And if you don't have the latter, you can't succeed, no matter how good you are at the former.
(3) "The true product of a business is the business itself." I think this is the most important insight in this entire book: to think of the business itself as a product, as a machine that can consistently and repeatedly produce a certain result. And that machine should work without you, or any specific individual involved. The book pitches this as a "franchise" concept—where you create a reusable blueprint for your business, so you can stamp out franchises all over the place—but even if you don't plan on actually franchising anything, to be successful, you still need to build your business in exactly this way.
"What Ray Kroc understood at McDonald's was that the hamburger wasn't his product. McDonald's was."
(4) The key insight of this book is more or less the same insight as in the book Built to Sell: you should build your business as if you were going to sell it to someone, even if you have no plans to sell it whatsoever. And a business that's optimized for selling is just like a business that's optimized for franchising: it's a machine, a repeatable process, one that can be executed by anyone, and not just you (since you won't be involved after selling!).
"Forced to create a business that worked in order to sell it, he also created a business that would work once it's sold, no matter who bought it. Armed with that realization, he set about the task of creating a foolproof, predictable business. A systems-dependent business, not a people-dependent business. A business that could work without him. Unlike most small business owners before him—and since—Ray Kroc went to work on his business, not in it. He began to think about his business like an engineer working on a pre-production prototype of a mass-produceable product."
(5) One of the keys to building a "franchise" (even if you don't plan on franchising) is to find a way to build a business that is systems-dependent rather than people-dependent. That is, your business should be able to deliver results to the customer, not based on hiring employees who are world's greatest experts and can therefore do extraordinary things to get those results—experts are rare and expensive, and their performance fluctuates (e.g., depending on mood or motivation), so it's hard to scale a business around them—but based on having the right system in place that allows regular employees to consistently get those same results.
"It is literally impossible to produce a consistent result in a business that depends on extraordinary people. No business can do it for long. And no extraordinary business tries to! Because every extraordinary business knows that when you intentionally build your business around the skills of ordinary people, you will be forced to ask the difficult questions about how to produce a result without the extraordinary ones. You will be forced to find a system that leverages your ordinary people to the point where they can produce extraordinary results over and over again."
(6) The book defines a Business Development Program, which is a step by step guide for how to systematize every aspect of your business. It consists of 7 steps:
1. Your Primary Aim
2. Your Strategic Objective
3. Your Organizational Strategy
4. Your Management Strategy
5. Your People Strategy
6. Your Marketing Strategy
7. Your Systems Strategy
As the book gets further along, the content gets thinner and thinner, so I'll only touch on a few of these below.
(7) Primary Aim: imagine you're dead. Now, imagine people are attending your funeral, and someone is saying a eulogy for you. What would you want them to say about your life? What's the story they would tell? That's the Primary Aim. I found this a very powerful way to think of what I want to do with my life (and not just business)!
(8) Strategic Objective: What product you create and what you sell might are not the same thing! That is, what your customer walks out of the store with, and what the customer feels they've bought are typically very different:
"Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon and an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur, once said about his company: 'In the factory Revlon manufactures cosmetics, but in the store Revlon sells hope.'"
The reality is that most companies aren't selling products, but emotions and other intangibles: they are selling hope, time, peace of mind, power, love, etc. Knowing what you're really selling is critical to building a successful business.
(9) Organizational Strategy: "Most companies organize around personalities rather than around functions. That is, around people rather than accountabilities and responsibilities. The result is almost always chaos." One of the really powerful ideas in this book is that, right when you start your company, before there are any employees, you create an org chart for what the company will look like in the future. Within this org chart, you define every role, every title, and every responsibility. In the early days, the co-founders fulfill all these roles. Your goal is to try these roles out, figure out how to make each one work, record and systematize the process, and then hire other people to fill these roles, following your system, while you move up to managing them. Rinse and repeat until the whole org chart is filled out by others, and they are following the system you've created for them.
(10) People strategy. Once you have a system in place, the idea is to present it to new hires, on day one, a bit like introducing them to the rules of a game.
"There is nothing more exciting than a well-conceived game. That is what the very best businesses represent to the people who create them: a game to be played in which the rules symbolize the idea you, the owner, have about the world. If your idea is a positive one, your business will reflect that optimism. If your idea is a negative one, your business will reflect that as well. In this context, the degree to which your people 'do what you want' is the degree to which they buy into your game."
September 22, 2012
"A life laking in comprehensive structure is an aimless wreck. The absence of structure breads breakdown" - Quote from The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler. So Mr. Gerber makes the point that in a broken world our businesses need to be the shelter from the chaos with what Mr. Gerber calls "Impeccable order".
“The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next." - Michael E. Gerber.
“The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next." - Michael E. Gerber.
January 20, 2009
The general stuff was good. A lot of the specifics are born out of an older era of thinking. Just think of those few innovative companies that did away with the organizational charts. Think of those companies that laugh at it because it doesn't reflect reality. But is that because the idea of the chart is wrong or people just don't know how to make them properly. Perhaps the chart should be cut into a big jumble of different tasks all of which can be passed around like little bracelets. Your job is just whatever little "jobs" you have taken on. This could create a lot more freedom.
Your business should be something you work on and not something you work in.
Don't let it become just a miserable job.
Have an end game, even if it is only a Tim Ferriss esque stasis.
Quantify everything.
Break your job down into every different "job"
Hire unskilled people who want to learn because you can't hire good experts and if you did you wouldn't know what to do with them.
Sex and cash: don't sell what you love.
don't expect your business to be able to satisfy your need to paint/hack/write... (I think that this would be the summary)
I think that the reason I see Seth Godin everywhere is because he says what every marketer knows. Except that he does it perfectly.
He expressed what is an important idea. You cannot hire experts unless you are one. So don't try. Hire inexperienced people who are willing to work hard and learn. You'll get them on the cheap anyways.
Quotes:
"People who are exceptionally good in business aren't so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more."
"The work that was born out of love becomes a chore, among a welter of other less familiar and less pleasant chores."
"No one is willing to work as hard as you work. No one has your judgment, or your ability, or your desire, or your interest. That if it's going to get done right, you're the one who's gong to have to do it."
"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."
"Go to work on your business rather than in it. Go to work on your business as if it were the preproduction prototype of a mass-produceable product. Think of your business as something apart from yourself, as a world of its own, as a product of your efforts, as a machine designed to fulfill a very specific need, as a mechanism for giving you more life, as a system of interconnecting parts...as a solution to somebody else's problem."
"The entire process by which the business does business is a marketing tool."
"The how doesn't have to be expensive to be effective. In fact, some of the most powerful Innovations have required little more than the change of a few words, a gesture, the color of clothing."
"Their lives are spent living out the decision they have of their future, in the present. They compare what they've done with what they intended to do. And where there's a disparity between the two, they don't wait very long to make up the difference."
"The curtain, the curtain. Keep the curtain up at all cost. Because it is the curtain that kept him shrouded in darkness. And it's the darkness that holds out the light. It is the light, the openness, the clearing of all the obstacles to knowing that had become his true purpose: to be open. To be awake, to be available to what's really going on, to give up false beliefs...What truths is your curtain hiding from you? What misunderstanding keeps you where you are, in the past, in the dark, shrouded in you limited beliefs, shrinking from the world, from the light on the other side of the curtain? Until you lift the curtain, until you dare to pull the mask off the world's face, until you move beyond your Comfort Zone, you will never know what it is you were missing out there."
"Does the business I have in mind alleviate a frustration experienced by a large enough group of consumers to make it worth my while?"
"The truth is, nobody's interested in the commodity. People buy feelings."
"It wasn't the match, the mint, the cup of coffee, or the newspaper that did it. It was that somebody had heard me. And they heard me every single time."
"The work we do is a reflection of who we are."
"Find a perceived need and fill it."
Your Comfort Zone has been the curtain you have placed in front of your face and through which you view the world. Your Comfort Zone has been the tight little cozy planet on which you have lived, knowing all the places to hide because it's so small. Your Comfort Zone has seized you before and it can seize you again, when you're least prepared for it, because it knows what it means to you. Because it knows how much you want to be comfortable. Because it knows what price you are willing to pay for the comfort of being in control. The ultimate price, your life...Comfort overtakes us all when we're least prepared for it. Comfort makes cowards of us all."
Your business should be something you work on and not something you work in.
Don't let it become just a miserable job.
Have an end game, even if it is only a Tim Ferriss esque stasis.
Quantify everything.
Break your job down into every different "job"
Hire unskilled people who want to learn because you can't hire good experts and if you did you wouldn't know what to do with them.
Sex and cash: don't sell what you love.
don't expect your business to be able to satisfy your need to paint/hack/write... (I think that this would be the summary)
I think that the reason I see Seth Godin everywhere is because he says what every marketer knows. Except that he does it perfectly.
He expressed what is an important idea. You cannot hire experts unless you are one. So don't try. Hire inexperienced people who are willing to work hard and learn. You'll get them on the cheap anyways.
Quotes:
"People who are exceptionally good in business aren't so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more."
"The work that was born out of love becomes a chore, among a welter of other less familiar and less pleasant chores."
"No one is willing to work as hard as you work. No one has your judgment, or your ability, or your desire, or your interest. That if it's going to get done right, you're the one who's gong to have to do it."
"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."
"Go to work on your business rather than in it. Go to work on your business as if it were the preproduction prototype of a mass-produceable product. Think of your business as something apart from yourself, as a world of its own, as a product of your efforts, as a machine designed to fulfill a very specific need, as a mechanism for giving you more life, as a system of interconnecting parts...as a solution to somebody else's problem."
"The entire process by which the business does business is a marketing tool."
"The how doesn't have to be expensive to be effective. In fact, some of the most powerful Innovations have required little more than the change of a few words, a gesture, the color of clothing."
"Their lives are spent living out the decision they have of their future, in the present. They compare what they've done with what they intended to do. And where there's a disparity between the two, they don't wait very long to make up the difference."
"The curtain, the curtain. Keep the curtain up at all cost. Because it is the curtain that kept him shrouded in darkness. And it's the darkness that holds out the light. It is the light, the openness, the clearing of all the obstacles to knowing that had become his true purpose: to be open. To be awake, to be available to what's really going on, to give up false beliefs...What truths is your curtain hiding from you? What misunderstanding keeps you where you are, in the past, in the dark, shrouded in you limited beliefs, shrinking from the world, from the light on the other side of the curtain? Until you lift the curtain, until you dare to pull the mask off the world's face, until you move beyond your Comfort Zone, you will never know what it is you were missing out there."
"Does the business I have in mind alleviate a frustration experienced by a large enough group of consumers to make it worth my while?"
"The truth is, nobody's interested in the commodity. People buy feelings."
"It wasn't the match, the mint, the cup of coffee, or the newspaper that did it. It was that somebody had heard me. And they heard me every single time."
"The work we do is a reflection of who we are."
"Find a perceived need and fill it."
Your Comfort Zone has been the curtain you have placed in front of your face and through which you view the world. Your Comfort Zone has been the tight little cozy planet on which you have lived, knowing all the places to hide because it's so small. Your Comfort Zone has seized you before and it can seize you again, when you're least prepared for it, because it knows what it means to you. Because it knows how much you want to be comfortable. Because it knows what price you are willing to pay for the comfort of being in control. The ultimate price, your life...Comfort overtakes us all when we're least prepared for it. Comfort makes cowards of us all."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 15, 2019
3.5 Stars
Very repetitive, but it has some good concepts to think about.
Very repetitive, but it has some good concepts to think about.
May 15, 2010
This book is one of the most highly acclaimed reads for small business owners. I started listening to it on CD a few years ago and then got distracted and just finished it recently. I got the gist of the message a few years back and it truly shaped my business and focus from that point forward.
The E-Myth (Entrepreneurial Myth) is that businesses are started by entrepreneurs seeking profit. In actuality, businesses are started by technicians (employees) who convince themselves that they could be their own boss and work for themselves. They make the assumption that by understanding the technical work of a business, they also understand the business that does that technical work.
Like many photographers, I started my own business because I like photography. And like most photographers who own their own business, I did everything myself to start out with. I did the book-keeping, the shooting, the editing, the product production, sales, marketing, graphic design, and networking. I wore every hat and very quickly realized I would burn myself right out if I continued on this path. The author states that there are 3 different roles that need to be covered in order for a small business to succeed: the technician, the manager and the entrepreneur. Most everyone who starts a small business does so because they like the technician work -- in my case taking and processing photos. But if they continue to cling to that role the business will ultimately, and fairly quickly, fail. They must be a manager and even more importantly, an entrepreneur -- having a vision and thinking about the big picture of where they want their business to go. But they won't be freed up to be a manager or entrepreneur if they are overwhelmed with the technical work of the business. They need to take on employees or outsource the work of the business in order to grow. I talk to so many photographers who are just starting out and I hear the same thing over and over again. They are spending all their time behind the computer editing and know they need to focus on other areas of their businesses but they just don't have the time. In order to get over this hump and have a chance to succeed, they need to let go of part of the technician in themselves and embrace the manager and entrepreneur.
Once a business grows and has more employees handling various roles in the business it is of utmost importance to systematize. Everything you do should be a system that can be duplicated. You will be far more efficient and profitable if you systematize, systematize, systematize. Design your business as if you were going to try to make 2000 others just like it. Then you will be able to easily train others to do much of the work IN the business so that you can focus on working ON the business. I have dedicated myself to the process of systematizing everything we do at Melissa Jill Photography for the past few years. A ton of work has gone into developing our workflow and systems manual. I can definitely see how this hard work has paid off.
If you haven't yet read this book and you are a small business owner -- get on it! You will be happy you did.
The E-Myth (Entrepreneurial Myth) is that businesses are started by entrepreneurs seeking profit. In actuality, businesses are started by technicians (employees) who convince themselves that they could be their own boss and work for themselves. They make the assumption that by understanding the technical work of a business, they also understand the business that does that technical work.
Like many photographers, I started my own business because I like photography. And like most photographers who own their own business, I did everything myself to start out with. I did the book-keeping, the shooting, the editing, the product production, sales, marketing, graphic design, and networking. I wore every hat and very quickly realized I would burn myself right out if I continued on this path. The author states that there are 3 different roles that need to be covered in order for a small business to succeed: the technician, the manager and the entrepreneur. Most everyone who starts a small business does so because they like the technician work -- in my case taking and processing photos. But if they continue to cling to that role the business will ultimately, and fairly quickly, fail. They must be a manager and even more importantly, an entrepreneur -- having a vision and thinking about the big picture of where they want their business to go. But they won't be freed up to be a manager or entrepreneur if they are overwhelmed with the technical work of the business. They need to take on employees or outsource the work of the business in order to grow. I talk to so many photographers who are just starting out and I hear the same thing over and over again. They are spending all their time behind the computer editing and know they need to focus on other areas of their businesses but they just don't have the time. In order to get over this hump and have a chance to succeed, they need to let go of part of the technician in themselves and embrace the manager and entrepreneur.
Once a business grows and has more employees handling various roles in the business it is of utmost importance to systematize. Everything you do should be a system that can be duplicated. You will be far more efficient and profitable if you systematize, systematize, systematize. Design your business as if you were going to try to make 2000 others just like it. Then you will be able to easily train others to do much of the work IN the business so that you can focus on working ON the business. I have dedicated myself to the process of systematizing everything we do at Melissa Jill Photography for the past few years. A ton of work has gone into developing our workflow and systems manual. I can definitely see how this hard work has paid off.
If you haven't yet read this book and you are a small business owner -- get on it! You will be happy you did.
February 18, 2018
I am a small business owner, or at least I thought I was before I read this book, but now I realise I'm not. Yes, I'm a self-employed English language teacher in Japan, but what I have isn't a business so much as a job. The crucial difference being what happens if you stop pedalling. If I did, the bike would quickly grind to a halt and topple over. That means I have a job. A business on the other hand is an institution (even a small one) that could be run by someone else. The real difference, as Gerber explains, is the system. With a system (think game plan, plot structure, lesson plan) you are free to approach your business from a different perspective. And that perspective is to treat your business as a prototype, a testing ground where you keep innovating, measuring results and standardising successful practices until you have built a system that works. Divide what work needs to be done into categories (like doing the accounts, the marketing, making the widgets) and decide who is responsible for each job. The jobs might all fall on your own shoulders at first but that's OK, at least you are approaching the work as a business and at some point you could hire people into the different jobs and give them a manual (you have a system now, remember?). The aim is to free yourself of having to do the menial tasks and be able to focus on the future of the business. Easy right? In theory. And this is where Gerber excels. Approaching work as a system means you are free to make mistakes, free to experiment and free to develop what you have into something really great. I'm on board.
The only downside to Gerber's book is the rather artificial case study, Sarah and her pie shop, that keeps popping up at the end of every chapter. I get that Gerber needed an example to demonstrate his points, but by the end of the book I was eager for Sarah to be bitten by a zombie or vampire and turn the pie machine onto her mentor and then, we'd see how robust a system Gerber really has. Still, his insights from a book written before internet business had really dawned are invaluable. In the category of must read for entrepreneurs and would-be conquerors of the known business world.
Download my starter library for free here - http://eepurl.com/bFkt0X - and receive my monthly newsletter with book recommendations galore for the Japanophile/crime fiction/English teacher in all of us.
The only downside to Gerber's book is the rather artificial case study, Sarah and her pie shop, that keeps popping up at the end of every chapter. I get that Gerber needed an example to demonstrate his points, but by the end of the book I was eager for Sarah to be bitten by a zombie or vampire and turn the pie machine onto her mentor and then, we'd see how robust a system Gerber really has. Still, his insights from a book written before internet business had really dawned are invaluable. In the category of must read for entrepreneurs and would-be conquerors of the known business world.
Download my starter library for free here - http://eepurl.com/bFkt0X - and receive my monthly newsletter with book recommendations galore for the Japanophile/crime fiction/English teacher in all of us.
June 6, 2015
Self-employment does not make you an entrepreneur.
In this classic, Gerber highlights the three functions in a business: the Entrepreneur, the Manager, and the Technician. Self-employed people stay on the Technician-level and thus limit themselves.
He then moves onto the three stages of business growth, Infancy, Adolescence, and Maturity and shows how the role of the functions change as you grow.
Finally he outlines a Business Development Program, a practical Turn-Key system for putting his ideas into action.
I'm looking forward to putting these ideas to work in my business, Targeted Resumes, over the coming weeks and months.
If you got into business because you wanted freedom, then study this book and make its ideas happen in your business.
In this classic, Gerber highlights the three functions in a business: the Entrepreneur, the Manager, and the Technician. Self-employed people stay on the Technician-level and thus limit themselves.
He then moves onto the three stages of business growth, Infancy, Adolescence, and Maturity and shows how the role of the functions change as you grow.
Finally he outlines a Business Development Program, a practical Turn-Key system for putting his ideas into action.
I'm looking forward to putting these ideas to work in my business, Targeted Resumes, over the coming weeks and months.
If you got into business because you wanted freedom, then study this book and make its ideas happen in your business.
February 23, 2015
Hands down the best book on business I've read yet. You often hear the same generic motivational narrative and watered down advice over and over. This book was the complete opposite - it shows you the core of what a business really is and gives you practical advice on starting a successful one. A must read for anyone into entrepreneurship, and even if you aren't it'll give you invaluable advice on how to use systems to achieve results in your every day life.
January 30, 2018
This book definitely had a handful of REALLY good ideas. Unfortunately, they were buried by a couple hundred pages of horribly written gibberish. The E-Myth easily could have been condensed into maybe 50 pages, and it wouldn't have been so painful to get through. Gerber's stories of his conversations with "Sarah" are so over-the-top dramatic that I couldn't believe a word of it.
Find a summary online, study the main points, and skip the book.
Find a summary online, study the main points, and skip the book.
August 23, 2022
While I do agree with other reviewers that the style of writing in this book is extremely cheesy, i have to admit that the advice contained here was absolutely invaluable to me. I was given a practical roadmap for the next steps in growing my business, and also a renewed enthusiasm for the work that I’m doing.
September 22, 2019
That was a painful read and a waste of time. The tone was condescending. I'd be more upset but the book was only 99¢. It was one giant advertisement for their consulting services. No actual answers or evidence to back up their claims.
August 21, 2017
Couldn't get past the repetition and corny dialogue.
August 21, 2022
There are a lot of good ideas in this book about managing a business, specifically, your own business. However, by the time I finished this book I wanted to slap the reader and jam one of his fictional “client’s” cherry pies into his face. See my comment to Chris’s review of this book. There were a number of very good ideas about the importance of being involved in the daily management of your own business - many of which I have adopted for my own law practice -, but I could not abide the “pie-seller parable” model on which these ideas were based. Once again, see my comment on Chris’s review, and my sincere desire that this book had had at least one chapter on “anger management“. In the absence of such a chapter, an ice-cold shower at the conclusion of this book is *highly* recommended. You’ll never look at, or eat, cherry pie the same way again.
August 30, 2022
I despise the structure of most of these books. there’s a patently fake “business owner“ complete with frazzled hair, that is just struggling to make the business work.
Thankfully for her, all that’s needed three easy payments of $19.99 to the author of this book, and now all of a sudden she’s able to run a thriving and fantastic business. On par with great operators like: Ray Kroc of McDonald’s fame, Henry Ford, and other dashing a luminaries of business mythology.
It’s a call-and-response but with an audience plant. And unfortunately the author decides to use the same audience plant and “business“ for everything. I think the book would have been significantly improved to use a wide variety of businesses as examples here.
As it stands it just seemed kind of demeaning, like the author was telling a business bedtime story to a small child. “and then Goldilocks decided to adopt a franchise model to ship perfectly temperatureed porridge worldwide. The end”
And that’s fine, there is plenty of shitty business self-help out there. Who moved my cheese is the pinnacle of toxic management. A useful signal to know and ask about while interviewing, if the interviewer has read the book and does anything but denounce it, that’s the end of that interview process. I will be avoiding that business at all costs.
But the annoying bit is I actually agree with a lot of the core information in the book, it’s just that it’s filtered through this sleezy consultant-based framing.
Systematizing your business is vital to growing a sustainable and long-term business. I’ve worked at start ups nearly my whole career. The last couple years I’ve been roughly in operations roles where this has been my job the majority of time. Doing a thing, and then automating or structuring process around the thing. So much of it is about removing yourself from the problem-solving process and allowing other people to do the work.
There’s some bits about psychology that are really prescient as well. Tapping into sort of an internal family systems model around the operator, technician, entrepreneur, and manager personalities. It’s really smart and I’m gonna steal the framing to talk with people in the future about all of that.
It’s just again, it’s a super annoying way to impart information. It’s like the author was insecure that they wouldn’t be understood or listen to, so they had to “punch up their story“ with this made up pie company. And maybe the pie company really doesn’t exist, maybe it’s not called Pie in the Sky and the operator makes millions of dollars a year.
So if you can get through the obnoxious consultant framing, there’s some valuable information in here.
Thankfully for her, all that’s needed three easy payments of $19.99 to the author of this book, and now all of a sudden she’s able to run a thriving and fantastic business. On par with great operators like: Ray Kroc of McDonald’s fame, Henry Ford, and other dashing a luminaries of business mythology.
It’s a call-and-response but with an audience plant. And unfortunately the author decides to use the same audience plant and “business“ for everything. I think the book would have been significantly improved to use a wide variety of businesses as examples here.
As it stands it just seemed kind of demeaning, like the author was telling a business bedtime story to a small child. “and then Goldilocks decided to adopt a franchise model to ship perfectly temperatureed porridge worldwide. The end”
And that’s fine, there is plenty of shitty business self-help out there. Who moved my cheese is the pinnacle of toxic management. A useful signal to know and ask about while interviewing, if the interviewer has read the book and does anything but denounce it, that’s the end of that interview process. I will be avoiding that business at all costs.
But the annoying bit is I actually agree with a lot of the core information in the book, it’s just that it’s filtered through this sleezy consultant-based framing.
Systematizing your business is vital to growing a sustainable and long-term business. I’ve worked at start ups nearly my whole career. The last couple years I’ve been roughly in operations roles where this has been my job the majority of time. Doing a thing, and then automating or structuring process around the thing. So much of it is about removing yourself from the problem-solving process and allowing other people to do the work.
There’s some bits about psychology that are really prescient as well. Tapping into sort of an internal family systems model around the operator, technician, entrepreneur, and manager personalities. It’s really smart and I’m gonna steal the framing to talk with people in the future about all of that.
It’s just again, it’s a super annoying way to impart information. It’s like the author was insecure that they wouldn’t be understood or listen to, so they had to “punch up their story“ with this made up pie company. And maybe the pie company really doesn’t exist, maybe it’s not called Pie in the Sky and the operator makes millions of dollars a year.
So if you can get through the obnoxious consultant framing, there’s some valuable information in here.
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