For this month’s PDP, I decided to read The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber. It came highly recommended by my apprenticeship advisor, and it’s safe to say that I now recommend it to every entrepreneur out there.
Straightforward yet graceful, The E-Myth Revisited dissects “why most small businesses don’t work and what to do about it.” As a participant in an entrepreneurial program (Yes, you should definitely check it out.), I found this subtitle particularly interesting. What is the big myth that entrepreneurs are led to believe? And what can be done about it?
In my ever-expanding view of the subject, the e-myth goes a little something like this: You can quit your job, go into business for yourself and never look back. Sure, you’ll have to put your nose to the grindstone for a while, but you’re going to love it. This is your dream. Your passion. “We don’t need no money, honey… we got love.”
*grabs pillow* *screams*
LIES.
You absolutely must love yourself enough to know that throwing yourself into business without a concrete plan is totally inhumane.
Late nights get later. Early mornings get earlier. Time flies, but your business stands completely still.
But, as Iko and I often say, “Broken isn’t the same as unfixable.”
The E-Myth has taught me to view every small business as a franchise. Sounds crazy, right? But it isn’t. In fact, building your business as if you plan to one day franchise it is the e-secret.
Here are some other takeaways from my reading:
- “It’s not that we’re indecisive or unreliable; it’s that each and every one of us is a whole set of different personalities, each with his own interests and way of doing things. Asking any one of them to defer to any of the others is inviting a battle or even a full-scale war.”
- Systems run businesses. People run systems. You cannot have one without the other.
- Systems are not to be brought to businesses. They are derived from the process of building the business itself.
- “Once you recognize that the purpose of your life is not to serve your business, but that the primary purpose of your business is to serve your life, you can then go to work on your business, rather than in it, with a full understanding of why it is absolutely necessary for you to do so.”
- “… value is what people perceive it to be, and nothing more.”
- franchise: “your unique way of doing business“
- “… 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.”
- People don’t buy commodities. People buy feelings.
- “What your customer wants is probably significantly different from what you think he wants.”
- The purpose of a system is “to free you to do the things you want to do.”
Is what you think about entrepreneurship a widely accepted myth? Click here to purchase The E-Myth Revisited and start working on your business instead of in it.
Photo by The Creative Exchange on Unsplash
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