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

by Michael E. Gerber

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

The real tragedy is that when the technician falls prey to the Fatal Assumption, the business that was supposed to free him from the limitations of working for somebody else actually enslaves him.

“The purpose of going into business is to get free of a job so you can create jobs for other people.

As a business grows, it invariably exceeds its owner’s ability to control it—to touch, feel, and see the work that needs to be done, and to inspect its progress personally as every technician needs to do.

“Simply put, your job is to prepare yourself and your business for growth.

A Mature company is founded on a broader perspective, an entrepreneurial perspective, a more intelligent point of view. About building a business that works not because of you but without you.

the Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important—the way it’s delivered is.

Thus, the Entrepreneurial Model does not start with a picture of the business to be created but of the customer for whom the business is to be created. It understands that without a clear picture of that customer, no business can succeed.