The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

by Michael E. Gerber

my experience has shown me that the 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 greatest businesspeople I’ve met are determined

to get it right no matter what the cost.

They know that a business doesn’t miss the mark by failing to achieve greatness in some lofty, principled way, but in the stuff that goes on in every nook and cranny of the business—on the telephone, between the customer and a salesperson, on the shipping dock, at the cash register.

the simple truth about the greatest businesspeople I have known is that they have a genuine fascination for the truly astonishing impact little things done exactly right can have on the world.

This book is a guide for those who see the development of an extraordinary business as a never-ending inquiry,

this fascination with the development of an extraordinary business is not the same as a fascination with success.

being present in the moment, from being attentive to what’s going on.

the problem is not that the owners of small businesses in this country don’t work; the problem is that they’re doing the wrong work.

It’s about four profound ideas, which, if you understand and take them to heart, will give you the power to create an extraordinarily exciting, and personally rewarding, small business.

This book, then, is about producing results—not

Going from "how to" to "great results" is key. How do i do this for myself--turn my instructions and plans into great results?

what makes people work is an idea worth working for, along with a clear understanding of what needs to be done.

your business is nothing more than a distinct reflection of who you are.

If your thinking is sloppy, your business will be sloppy. If you are disorganized, your business will be disorganized. If you are greedy, your employees will be greedy, giving you less and less of themselves and always asking for more. If your information about what needs to be done in your business is limited, your business will reflect that limitation.

So if your business is to change—as it must continuously to thrive—y...

That Fatal Assumption is: if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work.

In fact, it’s the root cause of most small business failures!

The technical work of a business and a business that does that technical work are two totally different things!

In fact, rather than being their greatest single asset, knowing the technical work of their business becomes their greatest single liability.

Suddenly the job he knew how to do so well becomes one job he knows how to do plus a dozen others he doesn’t know how to do at all.

In other words, when you’re The Skinny Guy you’re always making promises for The Fat Guy to keep. And when you’re The Fat Guy, you’re always making promises for The Skinny Guy to keep. Is it any wonder we have such a tough time keeping our commitments to ourselves?

Different objectives and whims. Maybe write and rewrite objectives, consider motivations and why's over time, between people until you all agree or one decides and commit

Well, that’s the kind of war going on inside the owner of every small business. But it’s a three-way battle between The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and The Technician.

The entrepreneurial personality turns the most trivial condition into an exceptional opportunity. The Entrepreneur is the visionary in us. The dreamer.

The managerial personality is pragmatic. Without The Manager there would be no planning, no order, no predictability.

The Manager is the one who runs after The Entrepreneur to clean up the mess. Without The Entrepreneur there would be no mess to clean up. Without The Manager, there could be no business, no society. Without The Entrepreneur, there would be no innovation.

The Technician is the doer.

To The Technician, thinking is unproductive unless it’s thinking about the work that needs to be done. As a result, he is suspicious of lofty ideas or abstractions. Thinking isn’t work; it gets in the way of work.

But to the business it’s a disaster, because the wrong person is at the helm. The Technician is in charge!

you’ll begin to understand how devastating the tyranny of your strongest personality is to your life. And you’ll see that without balance, without all three of these personalities being given the opportunity, the freedom, the nourishment they each need to grow, your business cannot help but mirror your own lopsidedness.

Who dominates in me? The entrepreneur?the technician? The manager? Someone else?

“An Entrepreneur does the work of envisioning the business as something apart from you, the owner. The work of asking all the right questions about why this business, as opposed to that business?

“I wonder what that business would be?” I said to Sarah, “is the truly entrepreneurial question.

That’s the work the entrepreneurial personality does at the outset of her business and at each and every stage along the way.

I call it Future Work. ‘I wonder’ is the true work of the entrepreneurial personality.”

Instead most businesses are operated according to what the owner wants as opposed to what the business needs.

How to separate the two? How to identify want vs need?

He wants a place to go to work, free to do what he wants, when he wants, free from the constraints of work Unfortunately, what The Technician wants dooms his business before it even begins.

It’s easy to spot a business in Infancy—the owner and the business are one and the same thing.

In Infancy, you are the business.

you suddenly realize it simply isn’t going to get done. There’s simply no way in the world you can do all that work yourself!

you realize that your business has become The Boss you thought you left behind. There’s no getting rid of the Boss!

Infancy ends when the owner realizes that the business cannot continue to run the way it has been; that, in order for it to survive, it will have to change.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a Technician. There’s only something wrong with being a Technician who also owns a business!

You see the world from the bottom up rather than from the top down.

You believe that a business is nothing more than an aggregate of the various types of work done in it, when in fact it is much more than that.

it’s the work you’re not doing, the strategic work, the entrepreneurial work, that will lead your business forward, that will give you the life you’ve not yet known.

If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!

“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 existing horizons. So you can invent something that satisfies a need in the marketplace that has never been satisfied before. So you can live an expanded, stimulating new life.”

what if I want to do the technical work in my business?

“Then for God’s sake,” I said as emphatically as I dared, “get rid of your business! And get rid ...

You can’t ignore your future employees’ need for leadership, for purpose, for responsible management, for effective communication, for something more than just a job in which their sole purpose is to support you doing your job.

“if all you want from a business of your own is the opportunity to do what you did before you started your business, get paid more for it, and have more freedom to come and go, your greed—I know that sounds harsh, but that’s what it is—your self-indulgence will eventually consume both you and your business.”

Shift from me--my ego and want--to the needs of the business--core element of level 5