The E –Myth
by Michael Gerber
What’s it all about?
I first found the E Myth when I was the MD of a fairly large company (we had over 400 employees) so I didn’t come at it from the direction of a small business entrepreneur – but the mistakes I was making as an MD were just the same as I have made in a variety of smaller businesses since.
I started off when my eldest daughter was born, and as an accountant, I had the idea of setting up a business to run from home alongside my mothering duties – in Gerber’s terms I became a technician having an entrepreneurial seizure. Unsurprisingly it didn’t work.
So many businesses are established that way, but they don’t have to stay that way and this amazing CD gives us all we need to create a perfect process driven structure into which any of our business ideas will fit.
It has the basic premise at its heart: in order for any business to have an intrinsic value it must become separate from the business founder otherwise that business founder has just created themselves a job, and every chapter takes you through that separation process with suggested structures and templates and even gives you a proposed business strategic structure that you can apply.
I’ve always loved this material. I’ve gone through it several times with big businesses and small and found it useful every time. I still use the basic ‘sell, do and tell’ business divisions to this day, and like all great stuff I see and understand something different every time I go through it.
For any entrepreneur wanting to develop their business to be sold, or franchised or even just kept, there are valuable guides and lessons in every chapter.
It’s a personalised approach to business, it isn’t grand or patronising. It’s quick to read and chunked so that you can get straight to the part you need NOW.
The things that I will remember are the mantras: work ON the business not IN the business; and the story of Ray Kroc and McDonalds in the sell the business not the product section.
Why should you read it/listen to it?
As a guide, as business direction and as the non-nonsense information we need to increase the value in our time and businesses. Also, it makes us realise that we all make similar mistakes until we get appropriate knowledge like this! This is one of my long standing ‘repeat’ reads.
