Summary: The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber
Summary: The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

Summary: The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

Entrepreneur Seizure

Technician suffering from an entrepreneur seizure takes the work he loves to do and turns it into a job.

Never assume understanding the technical work of a business means understanding a business that does technical work

 

3 Personalities Inside Every Entrepreneur

We all have an Entrepreneur, a Manager and a Technical inside us.

#1 Entrepreneur
  • Construct images of ‘WHAT-IF’ and ‘IF-WHEN’
  • Penetrates and creates new markets
  • Deals with unknowns, drives the future, creates probabilities out of possibilities and engineers chaos into harmony
  • Has extraordinary need for control
#2 Manager
  • Practical (pragmatic)
  • Plans, order and predicts
  • Clings onto the status quo
  • Entrepreneur sees the opportunity in events, Manager invariably sees the problems
  • Runs after the E to clean up his mess
#3 Technician
  • Doer
  • Loves to repair
  • Knows 2 things can’t be done simultaneously, loves to work on 1 thing at a time
  • Thinking isn’t his work, it gets in his way of work
  • Not interested in ideas, interested in ‘how’ to do things

A typical small business owner is 10% E, 20% M and 70% T.

 

3 Growth Phases

Infancy > Adolescence > Maturity

If my business depends on me, I don’t own a business, I have a job. E Model has less to do with what’s done in a business, it’s more to do with how it’s done.

Pretend the business you own or want to own is a prototype of 5000 more just like it. 

Documentation provides how to get the job done in the most efficient and effective way.

  1. How can I get my business to work, without me?
  2. How can I get my people to work, without my constant interference?
  3. How can I systemize my business that it can be replicated 5,000 times, so the 5,000th unit can run just as smoothly as the first one?
  4. How can I spend my time doing the work I love to do rather than work I must do?

 

Business Development Process

#1 Innovation

Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things. Innovation can be as simple as asking the customers ‘Hi! May I Help You?’ Ask ‘Hi, have you been in here before?’

#2 Quantification

All innovations need to be quantified. Otherwise there’s no way to know it worked! Quantify what matters:

  1. How many customers I see everyday?
  2. How many in morning / afternoon?
  3. How many customers call every day?
  4. How many call to ask for a price?
  5. How many want to purchase something?
  6. How many of product X are sold each day?
  7. At what time they’re sold?
  8. How many are sold each week?
  9. What days are busiest? How busy?
#3 Orchestration

Orchestrates with customers, employees, suppliers and lenders.

 

7 Core Elements of Business Development

  1. My Primary Aim
  2. My Strategic Objective
  3. My Organizational Strategy
  4. My Management Strategy
  5. My People Strategy
  6. My Marketing Strategy
  7. My Systems Strategy
#1 My Primary Aim

I must know what got me where I am and what I need to do to get where I’m going. I must create my life rather than being created by my life. I must see everything as a challenge rather than a blessing or a curse.

#2 My Strategic Objective

I must have a clear statement of what my business ultimately does for me to achieve my primary aim. At the beginning, any standards are better than no standards. Remember it’s always the commodity, never the product.

#3 My Organizational Strategy

Organize my business around accountabilities rather than people. ‘Position Contract’ is a summary of the results to be achieved by each position

#4 My Management Strategy

Know how my things, actions, ideas and information interact with each other, and in so doing, alter other systems.

#5 My People Strategy

I must communicate my game clearly so they buy into my game. Never create a game for my people to play I’m not willing to play for myself. Create a game that can be won without ending it. Change the game from time to time, tactic not strategy. And above all, constantly remind people about the game.

“The work we do is a reflection of who we are. If we’re sloppy at it, it’s because we’re sloppy inside. If we’re late at it, it’s because we’re late inside. If we’re bored by it, it’s because we’re bored inside, with ourselves, not with the work. How we do our work becomes a mirror of how we are inside.”

  1. Give everyone who comes to work at my business an opportunity to make a choice.
  2. The customer isn’t always right. But it’s our job to make him feel that way.
  3. Everyone who works for here is expected to deliver the best. If he can’t do that he should act like he is until he gets around to it. If he’s unwilling, he should leave.

What’s wrong with experienced managers for small business? Everything’s wrong with it. Because they will manage by the standards they’ve been taught in someone else’s business. Not by my standards.

#6 My Marketing Strategy

Remember two most important things:

  1. Demographics – Who are my customers
  2. Psychographics – Why they want what they want
#7 My Systems Strategy

Systems allow mere mortals to run an extraordinary business. Build a system (hard systems, soft systems, information systems) that I can replicate 5,000 times and the last replication is still as good as the first one.

 

3-Step Power Point Selling Process

#1 Appointment Presentation

Engage the prospects’ unconscious by speaking primarily about the context and benefits than the product.

Hi Mr Jackson, I’m William with Myanmar Jardine Schindler. Have you seen remarkable new things that are being done to control money these days?

#2 Entrepreneur Assessment

Repeat what I said. Reestablish commitment.

Remember Mr Jackson. When we first talked I mentioned some remarkable new things were going in the world to control money?

Tell him how I can and want to fulfill my promise.

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 has developed to help you control money here in your business. Okay?

Establish my credibility in his mind by communicating my expertise and my willingness to utilize such expertise.

Let me tell you why we created our company Mr Jackson. We’ve found that people like yourself are continuously frustrated by not being able to get the most out of their money. Frustrated by paying higher interest rates than they have to. By working with financial experts who don’t seem to know what they’re doing. By banking with a bank that doesn’t seem to have their best interest at heart”

Do these things ever frustrate you Mr Jackson? Of course they do. And that’s why we have created a Money-Controlling system that makes it possible for you to get the most preferential treatment in the financial arena while paying the least for it. Now I know that sounds too good to be true. But let me explain how we plan to do that for you…”

Describe the impact my system has on him.

Our Money-controlling system is designed to do three things Mr Jackson.

First it enables us to know what specifically bothers you about controlling your money ………………………………..

#3 Solutions Presentation

Selling isn’t ‘closing’. Selling is ‘Opening’

It opens up the prospect to a deeper experience of his frustration and to the opportunities that available to him by going through the questioning process.

 

The world’s not in chaos. We are.

Unfortunately we are an ‘out there’ society, accustomed to thinking ‘them’ against ‘us’. If the world’s going to be changed, we must first change our lives!

A small business is

  • A place where can practice implementing ideas so we can change our lives
  • A place we begin to test assumptions
  • A place where questions are as important as, if not more than, answers
  • A place where generalizations must give way to specifics

Now it’s time to act.

  • Until I act, I won’t understand it.
  • And when I act, I will have nothing left to think, I will be well on my way.