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

by Michael E. Gerber

Your Strategic Objective is a very clear statement of what your business has to ultimately do for you to achieve your Primary Aim.

At the beginning of your business, any standards are better than no standards.

Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon

“In the factory Revlon manufactures cosmetics, but in the store Revlon sells hope.”

standards create the energy by which the best companies, and the most effective people, produce results.

Theodore Levitt Management for Business Growth

Jack and Murray go to work in their business. But now with a difference. They are no longer interested in working in their business. They are now focused on developing a business that works.

it’s critical if you are to begin your business all over again that you’re able to separate yourself from the roles you need to play. To become

independent of them, rather than these roles becoming dependent on you.

“It’s our automatic nature we’ve got to organize into an intentional nature. “And the only way we can do that is intentionally, not automatically.

“And, once you have done that, once you’ve organized your business in the most intelligent way you can, your next most important job is to follow the rules of the game you have created with integrity. “Because if you won’t follow the rules, why should anyone else? “If the rules don’t apply to you, the leader, why should you expect anyone to follow you?

You may think that the successful implementation of a management strategy is dependent on finding amazingly competent managers—people with finely honed “people skills,” with degrees from management schools, with highly sophisticated techniques for dealing with and developing their people. It isn’t. You don’t need such people. Nor can you afford them.

In fact, they will be the bane of your existence. What you need, instead, is a Management System.

it wasn’t the match, the mint, the cup of coffee, or the newspaper that did it. It was that somebody had heard me.

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 bu...

In this context, the degree to which your people “do what you want” is the degree to whic...

Part of what’s missing is purpose. Values. Worthwhile standards against which our lives can be measured. Part of what’s missing is a Game Worth Playing.

Human beings are capable of performing extraordinary acts.

Capable of going to the moon. Capable of creating the computer. Capable of building a bomb that can destroy us all. The least we should be able to do is run a small business that works.

Delegation rather than Abdication? “You can’t delegate your accountabilities, Sarah. “Delegating your accountabilities is abdication.

“The System produces the results; your people manage the system.

Your Marketing Strategy starts, ends, lives, and dies with your customer. So in the development of your Marketing Strategy, it is absolutely imperative that you forget about your dreams, forget about your visions, forget about your interests, forget about what you want—forget about everything but your customer!

And what your customer wants is probably significantly different from what you think he wants.

decision, yes or no, is made at the instant it gets a taste! In a television commercial, we’re told, the sale is made or lost in the first three or four seconds. In a print ad, tests have shown, 75 percent of the buying decisions are made at the headline alone. In a sales presentation, data have shown us, the sale is made or lost in

the first three minutes.

“In a small business you simply can’t afford to spend the money they do. But you can afford to spend the time, the thought, the attention, on the same questions they ask.

Conflict without will creates frustration.

Conflict with will creates resolution, a movement beyond the dilemma.

What is a selling system? It’s a fully orchestrated interaction between you and your customer that follows six primary steps: 1. Identification of the specific Benchmarks—or consumer decision points—in your selling

process. 2. The literal scripting of the words that will get you to each one successfully (yes, written down like the script for a play!). 3. The creation of the various materials to be used with each script. 4. The memorization of each Benchmark’s script. 5. The delivery of each script by your salespeople in identical fashion.

6. Leaving your people to communicate more effectively, by articulating, watching, listening, hearing, acknowledging, understanding, and engaging each and...

A career development company we worked with put it in the hands of people with no experience, and

revenues increased 300 percent in one year. An advertising agency put it in the hands of people with no experience in either selling or advertising, and revenues increased 500 percent in two years. A health spa put it in the hands of people with no experience, and revenues increased 40 percent in two months.

The Power Point Selling System is composed of two parts: Structure and Substance.

Structure is what you do. Substance is how you do it.

The Structure of the System is all of the predetermined elements of the Process, and includes exactly what you say, the materials you u...

The Substance of the System is what you—the salesperson—bring to the Process, and includes how you say it, how you use it when you sa...

The Power Point Selling Process is actually a series of scripts defining the entire interaction between the salesperson and the customer.

It is a series of words, delivered on the telephone or in person, that engage the prospect’s unconscious

(remember?) by speaking primarily about the product you have to sell rather than the commodity.

For example: “Hi, Mr. Jackson. I’m Johnny Jones with Walter Mitty Company. Have you seen the remarkable new things that are bein...

“What new t...

“Let me tell you why we created

(1) be on the inside of the financial winners circle with people who are in the know; (2)

If your Systems Strategy is the glue that holds your Franchise Prototype together, then information is the glue that holds your Systems Strategy together.

‘Hi, have you been in here before?’ as opposed to ‘Hi, can I help you?’

Man’s Search for Himself.

You should know now that a man of knowledge lives by