What I have learned from Michael E. Gerber’s book ‘The E-Myth’. I highly recommend it.
The Fatal Assumption— if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work.
The problem is that everybody who goes into business is actually three-people-in-one: The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and The Technician.
The Entrepreneur: to him, most people are problems that get in the way of the dream. He needs control of people and events in the present so that he can concentrate on his dreams.
Most businesses are operated according to what the owner wants as opposed to what the business needs. It’s easy to spot a business in Infancy— the owner and the business are one and the same thing.
And 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.
Adolescence begins at the point in the life of your business when you decide to get some help.
How easy it was for me to become absorbed by the work rather than the people.
The key is to plan, envision, and articulate what you see in the future both for yourself and for your employees. Because if you don’t articulate it— I mean, write it down, clearly, so others can understand it— you don’t own it!
Building a business that works not because of you but without you.
The Entrepreneur asks: Where is the opportunity? How will my business look to the customer? How will my business stand out from all the rest? How do I give my customer what he wants while maintaining control of the business that’s giving it to him?
The true product of a business is the business itself. Your business is not your life— they are two totally separate things.
Integrity is doing what you say you will do, and, if you can’t, learning how.
The primary purpose of your business is to serve your life, you can then go to work on your business, rather than in it, with a full understanding of why it is absolutely necessary for you to do so.
The model of a business— the franchise game:
The model will provide consistent value to your customers, employees, suppliers, and lenders, beyond what they expect.
What is value? Is what people perceive it to be, and nothing more.
What could your Prototype do that would not only provide consistent value to your customers, employees, suppliers, and lenders but would provide it beyond their wildest expectations?
The model will be operated by people with the lowest possible level of skill.
How can I give my customer the results he wants systematically rather than personally? How can I create a business whose results are systems-dependent rather than expert-dependent?
How can I create an expert system rather than hire one? People bring systems to life.
Great businesses are not built by extraordinary people but by ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
The model will stand out as a place of impeccable order.
Individuals need life structure.
A business that looks orderly says to your customer that your business know what they’re doing, what you are doing, says that while the world may not work, some things can. It says to your customer that he can trust you, that a structure is in place.
All work in the model will be documented in operations manuals.
Documentation says: This is how we do it here.
Documentation provides the clarity structure needs if it is to be meaningful to your people. The Technician in each of us needs to understand to do the job at hand.
The model will provide a uniformly predictable service to the customer.
What you do in your model is not nearly as important as doing what you do the same way, each and every time.
The model will utilize a uniform color, dress, and facilities code.
Believe it or not, the colours and shapes of your model can make or break your business.
Think of your business as something apart from yourself, as a world of its own, as a product of your efforts, as a machine designed to fulfil a very specific need. Think of your business as anything but a job!
Ask yourself:
— How can I get my business to work, but without me?
— How can I get my people to work, but without my constant interference?
— How can I systematise my business in such a way that I could be replicated 5,000 times, so the 5,000th unit would run as smoothly as the first?
— How can I own my business, and still be free of it?
— How can I spend my time doing the work I love to do rather than the work I have to do?
Read Michael E. Gerber’s book ‘The E-Myth’.
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