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

by Michael E. Gerber

“He wasn’t hiring me to work; he was hiring me to do something much more important than that.”

The most menial work can be a piece of art when done by an artist. So the job here is not outside of ourselves, but inside of ourselves. How we do our work becomes a mirror of how we are inside.’”

“And the reason it’s different here is because we give everyone who comes to work at the hotel an opportunity to make a choice. Not after they’ve done the work, but before. “And we do that by making sure they understand the idea behind the work they’re being asked to do. “I guess that’s what excited me most about taking this job,” said the Manager. “It’s the very first place I’ve ever gone to work where there was an idea behind the work that was more important than the work itself.

“The idea the Boss expressed to me was broken down into three parts: “The first says that the customer is not always right, but whether he is or not, it is our job to make him feel that way. “The second says that everyone who works here is expected to work toward being the best he can possibly be at the tasks he’s accountable for. When he can’t do that, he should act like he is until he gets around to it. And if he’s unwilling to act like it, he should leave. “The third says that the business is a place where everything we know how to do is tested by what we don’t know how to do, and that the conflict between the two is what creates growth, what creates meaning. “The idea the Boss has about the business comes down to one essential notion. That a business is like a martial arts practice hall, a dojo, a place you go to practice being the best you can be. But the true combat in a dojo is not between one person and another as most people believe it to be. The true combat in a martial arts practice hall is between the people within ourselves.

“He wasn’t looking for employees so much as for players in his game. He was looking for people who wanted something more than just a job.”

Never figure out what you want your people to do and then try to create a game out of it. If it’s to be seen as serious, the game has to come first; what your people do, second.

Never create a game for your people you’re unwilling to play yourself. They’ll find you out and never let you forget it.

Make sure there are specific ways of winning the game without ending it. The game can never end because the end will take the life right out of your business. But unless there are victories in the process, your people will grow weary. Hence, the value of victories now and then. Th...

Change the game from time to time—the tactics, not the strategy. The strategy is its ethic, the moral underpinning of your game’s logic. This must remain sacrosanct, for it is the foundation of you and your people’s commitment to each other. But change is necessary. For any game c...

Never expect the game to be self-sustaining. People need to be reminded of it constantly. At least once a week, create a special meeting about the game. At least once a day, make some kind of issue about an exception to the way the game has been played—and make certain that everyone knows about it. Remember, in and of itself the game doesn’t exist. It is alive to the degree that people make it so. But people have the unerring ability to forget everything they start and to be distracted by trivia. Most great games are lost that way. To make certain yours isn’t, don’t expect your people to be something they’re not. Remind them, time after time, of the game they’re playing with you. You can’t remind them too often.

The game has to make sense. An illogical game will abort before it ever gets going. The best games are built on universally verifiable truths. Everyone should be able to see them if they’re to be sufficiently attractive. A game with muddy beginnings will get you nowhere.

The game needs to be fun from time to time. Note that I said, from time to time. No game needs to be fun all the time. In fact, a game is often no fun at all. That’s part of the thrill of playing a game well: learning how to deal with the “no fun” part so as to retain your dignity while falling on your face.

“In short, you need people who want to play your game, Sarah. Not people who believe they have a better one.

When it comes to marketing, what you want is unimportant. It’s what your customer wants that matters. And what your customer wants is probably significantly different from what you think he wants.

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.

And that’s how buying decisions are made. Irrationally! If anyone cared to do it, it could probably be proved that no one yet has ever made a rational decision to buy anything! So when your customer says, “I want to think about it,” don’t you believe him. He’s not going to think about it. He doesn’t know how. He’s already done all the “thinking” he’s going to do—he either wants it or not.

Despite what we would like to believe, the decision was made unconsciously and instantaneously. In fact, it was made long before you ever met. But your customer didn’t know it.

Research shows that the navy suit is perhaps the most powerful suit a person can wear in business. Instant impact.

“How do you do that? You find out on your questionnaire what colors they prefer, what shapes, what words. You find out the brands of perfume they buy, automobiles, clothes, jewelry, food. You match those brands to the ads and commercials that sell them, and you discover by becoming interested in what messages are being sent to your customers by other companies—who are successfully selling to them—what messages you might send to those customers, who are demographically and psychographically the same as your existing Central Demographic Model, to intentionally come in your door.

“And so, seen from the appropriate perspective, the entire business process by which your company does what it does is a marketing process. “It starts with the promise you make to attract them to your door. “It continues with the sale you make once they get there. “And it ends with the delivery of the promise before they leave your door.

“Because what McDonald’s knows, and what Federal Express knows, and what Disney knows—indeed, what every extraordinary business knows—is that the customer you’ve got is one hell of a lot less expensive to sell to than the customer you don’t have yet.

THE APPOINTMENT PRESENTATION Most salespeople fail at the outset of the selling process because they don’t realize the purpose of an Appointment Presentation. Most believe that the purpose of an Appointment Presentation is to qualify the customer and ascertain whether or not he is a viable prospect. It’s not. The purpose of an Appointment Presentation is one thing and one thing only: to make an appointment. The Appointment Presentation moves the prospect from where he is to the second Benchmark in the process, the Needs Analysis Presentation.

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 being done to control money these days?” “What new things?” “Well, that’s exactly why I called. May I have a moment of your time?” The product? Financial control. Control is the key. The presentation tells Mr. Jackson that there are things going on in the world—“remarkable new things”—that he doesn’t know about (he’s out of control), but he can now become familiar with them (gain control!) by just spending a few moments with Johnny Jones.

THE NEEDS ANALYSIS PRESENTATION The first thing you do in a Needs Analysis Presentation is repeat what you said in the Appointment Presentation to reestablish the emotional commitment: “Remember, Mr. Jackson, when we first talked I mentioned that some remarkable new things were going on in the world to control money?”

The second thing you do is tell the prospect how you would like to proceed to fulfill your promise to him: “Well, what I’d like to do is to tell you about those things. At the same time, I’d like to show you some incredibly effective ways my firm, Walter Mitty Company, has developed to help you to control money here in your business Okay?”

The third thing you do is to establish your credibility in the prospect’s mind by communicating two things. First, your company’s expertise is such matters: “We are Money-Controlling Specialists” (we, at E-Myth Worldwide, call that a Positioning Statement). And second, your personal willingness to do whatever is necessary to utilize that expertise on his behalf: “Let me tell you why we created our company, Mr. Jackson. We’ve found that people like yourself are continually frustrated by not being able to get the most out of their money. Frustrated by paying higher interest rates than they have to. ...

The fourth thing you do in a Needs Analysis Presentation is describe the Walter Mitty Company’s Money-Controlling System and why it works so well. Not what it does but the impact it will have on the prospect: “The Walter Mitty Company’s Money-Controlling System is designed to do three things, Mr. Jackson.

But what I know to be true from my own life experience is that you will not truly rediscover your “spirit” in the past but will discover it is waiting for you in the future on the path you have now chosen. Your spirit isn’t behind you—it is way ahead of you; it has already made its choice! All that needed to happen was for you to make yours, and you were together again! Pretty metaphysical for a hard-headed guy like me, perhaps, but while I can’t prove it, I know without a shadow of a doubt that it is true.

To be sure, it will be anything but certain, but that’s why it is so exciting! It’s the path of surprise. It’s the path of constant engagement. And because it’s all those things, it is truly the path of life, or, as Rollo May might have called it, “the path of freedom.” He said: “Thus freedom is not just the matter of saying ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to a specific decision: it is the power to mold and create ourselves. Freedom is the capacity, to use Nietzsche’s phrase, ‘to become what we truly are.’”