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The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It (Paperback)
by Michael E. Gerber
| Category:
Entrepreneurship, Small business |
| Market price: ¥ 178.00
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¥ 158.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
From world's #1 small business guru, this entrepreneurship classic and essential business reading is a must own for all entrepreneurs and managers. |
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Author: Michael E. Gerber
Publisher: Collins
Pub. in: April, 1995
ISBN: 0887307280
Pages: 288
Measurements: 7.7 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00174
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0887307287
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- Awards & Credential -
One of the bestselling texts on entrepreneurship ever published with more than one million copies sold. Ranks #176 in books out of millions on Amazon.com as of January 30, 2007. |
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- MSL Picks -
This book is a guide to success for small business owners. Gerber is the founder of a consulting company for small businesses. In the beginning of the book, Gerber cites the well-known failure-rate statistics for small business: 40% fail in 1 year. Of those who survive 1year, 80% fail in 5 years, and of those who survive 5 years, another 80% fail. Over the years, Gerber has observed that the small business owners who fail often share a number of characteristics, while those who succeed do so not by luck, brains, or perseverance, but by taking a different approach. This book explains the approach that is necessary for a business to survive and thrive.
One of Gerber's most striking observations is that most small businesses are started by "technicians", that is people who are skilled at something and who enjoy doing that thing. (A technician can be anything from a computer programmer to plumber to a dog groomer to a musician or lawyer.) When these technicians strike out on their own, they tend to continue doing the work they are skilled at, and ignore the overarching aspects of business. Without clear goals and quantification benchmarks, they soon find themselves overworked, understaffed, and eventually broke. Worst of all, they may come to hate the work they do. Rather than owning a business, they own a job, and they find themselves working for managers who are completely clueless about how to run a business - themselves.
The solution, Gerber argues, is for every business owner, especially the technician-owners, to balance their business personalities. According to Gerber, every business owner needs to simultaneously be an entrepreneur and a manager as well as a technician. The technician is the worker-bee, the one who produces the product. The manager makes sure operations and finances run smoothly and consistently. The entrepreneur formulates the goals, and steers the business in the direction needed to reach those goals. Of these three personalities, the entrepreneur is key - without it, the technician will work himself or herself to death or bankruptcy. As the business grows, the business owner will need to draw away from the technician work and manager work and delegate this work, rather than abdicate this, to others.
For turning businesses around, or getting them off the right foot, Gerber suggests looking at franchises as a model. In comparison to the dismal rate of ordinary small-business start-ups, 75% of franchises succeed at 5 years. The reason they succeed is that they are set up so that any unskilled person off the street could walk in, buy a franchise, run all operations in the franchise, and have a fairly good chance of success. The product of franchise companies is a business model, not food, hotel rooms, etc. In order to meet this level of success, franchise companies have clear operations manuals, procedures, consistent sales approaches - every detail of running the business is specified down to dress codes and wall paper.
By asking us to consider the franchise approach, Gerber is not saying to go out and buy a franchise license. Instead, he says to imagine that you want to sell your business as a successful franchise within a finite period of time. If so, what will you need to do regarding your business plan and management in order to meet this goal? That is, if you were going to make your business fool-proof so that any unskilled person could take over as owner after a few years and succeed with it, what will you need to do?
If you're a small business owner whose business is out of control, stagnant, or worse, or if you're thinking of going into business yourself, this book can be of immeasurable value.
(From quoting Erica Mitchell, USA)
Target readers:
Aspiring entrepreneurs, small business owners, teachers of entrepreneurship, MBAs, and working managers and professionals planning to own his/her own business in future.
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Michael E. Gerber is the founder and chairman of E-Myth Worldwide, based in Santa Rosa, California. He is the bestselling author of The E-Myth Revisited, The E-Myth Manager, The E-Myth Contractor, and The E-Myth Physician, as well as a highly sought-after speaker and small business revolutionary. He lives in Petaluma, California.
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From Publisher
In this first new and totally revised edition of the 150,000-copy underground bestseller, The E-Myth, Michael Gerber dispels the myths surrounding starting your own business and shows how commonplace assumptions can get in the way of running a business. He walks you through the steps in the life of a business from entrepreneurial infancy, through adolescent growing pains, to the mature entrepreneurial perspective, the guiding light of all businesses that succeed. He then shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business - whether or not it is a franchise. Finally, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in. your business. After you have read The E-Myth Revisited, you will truly be able to grow your business in a predictable and productive way.
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The Entrepreneurial Myth
They intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are.
- Aldous Huxley
The E-Myth is the myth of the entrepreneur. It runs deep in this country and rings of the heroic.
Picture the typical entrepreneur and Herculean pictures come to mind: a man or woman standing alone, wind-blown against the elements, bravely defying insurmountable odds, climbing sheer faces of treacherous rock - all to realize the dream of creating a business of one's own.
The legend reeks of nobility, of lofty, extra-human efforts, of a prodigious commitment to larger-than-life ideals.
Well, while there are such people, my experience tells me they are rare.
Of the thousands of businesspeople I have had the opportunity to know and work with over the past two decades, few were real entrepreneurs when I met them.
The vision was all but gone in most.
The zest for the climb had turned into a terror of heights.
The face of the rock had become something to cling to rather than to scale.
Exhaustion was common, exhilaration rare.
But hadn't all of them once been entrepreneurs? After all, they had started their own business. There must have been some dream that drove them to take such a risk.
But, if so, where was the dream now? Why had it faded?
Where was the entrepreneur who had started the business?
The answer is simple: the entrepreneur had only existed for a moment.
A fleeting second in time.
And then it was gone. In most cases, forever.
If the entrepreneur survived at all, it was only as a myth that grew out of a misunderstanding about who goes into business and why.
A misunderstanding that has cost us dearly in this country - more than we can possibly imagine - in lost resources, lost opportunities, and wasted lives.
That myth, that misunderstanding, I call the E-Myth, the myth of the entrepreneur.
And it finds its roots in this country in a romantic belief that small businesses are started by entrepreneurs, when, in fact, most are not.
Then who does start small businesses in America?
And why?
The Entrepreneurial Seizure
To understand the E-Myth and the misunderstanding at its core, let's take a closer look at the person who goes into business. Not after he goes into business, but before.
For that matter, where were you before you started your business? And, if you're thinking about going into business, where are you now?
Well, if you're like most of the people I've known, you were working for somebody else.
What were you doing?
Probably technical work, like almost everybody who goes into business.
You were a carpenter, a mechanic, or a machinist.
You were a bookkeeper or a poodle clipper; a drafts-person or a hairdresser; a barber or a computer programmer; a doctor or a technical writer; a graphic artist or an accountant; an interior designer or a plumber or a salesperson.
But whatever you were, you were doing technical work.
And you were probably damn good at it.
But you were doing it for somebody else.
Then, one day, for no apparent reason, something happened. It might have been the weather, a birthday, or your child's graduation from high school. It might have been the paycheck you received on a Friday afternoon, or a sideways glance from the boss that just didn't sit right. It might have been a feeling that your boss didn't really appreciate your contribution to the success of his business.
It could have been anything; it doesn't matter what. But one day, for apparently no reason, you were suddenly stricken with an Entrepreneurial Seizure. And from that day on your life was never to be the same.
Inside your mind it sounded something like this: "What am I doing this for? Why am I working for this guy? Hell, I know as much about this business as he does. If it weren't for me, he wouldn't have a business. Any dummy can run a business. I'm working for one."
And the moment you paid attention to what you were saying and really took it to heart, your fate was sealed.
The excitement of cutting the cord became your constant companion.
The thought of independence followed you everywhere.
The idea of being your own boss, doing your own thing, singing your own song, became obsessively irresistible.
Once you were stricken with an Entrepreneurial Seizure, there was no relief.
You couldn't get rid of it.
You had to start your own business.
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| View all 16 comments |
Trish Lind (T. Lind Graphics) (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-30 00:00>
Thanks to Gerber l have freed up over three hours a day, significantly increased my sales, more than doubled my bottom line, and been able to take my first vacation in four years. |
The John Hancock Insurance Group (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-30 00:00>
Without a doubt, the most important message for our company over thenext decade. |
Fortune (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-30 00:00>
Gerber loves to exhort people to develop powerful visions for their companies. |
Andrew Vanover (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-30 00:00>
Gerber's big idea is that (small) business is, at the core, to "create more life for everyone who comes into contact with the business, but most of all, for you, the person who owns it" (p. 132).
When I think of a small business owner, the first thing that comes to mind is someone who is overworked, underpaid and sacrificing other parts of life to give life to the business. Hoping to own a business in the future, I do not want to be that kind of person.
Similar to Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effectively People, Gerber wants you to define the Primary Aim - of your life, and how your business will further that aim.
He makes a clear distinction between the Entrepreneur, the Manager and the Technician inside every person. The E-Myth is that a successful Technician is a successful business owner.
A working small business has systems in place that "run" the day-to-day operations. Systematizing the business reduces dependence on skilled people and instead favors teachable/trainable people. The systems are always under examination and undergo continual improvement.
Incredibly optimistic, The E-Myth challenged many of my assumptions and intuitions about successful business. It reads quickly and easily. It will remain on my shelf for reference and rereading.
Notable quotable: "It's not your business that you have to fear losing. It's something much bigger than that. It's your self." (p. 148)
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