The E-Myth Revisited
by Michael Gerber

“Everybody who goes into business is actually three-people-in-one: The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and The Technician.”

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Michael believes that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.“If you are unwilling to change, your business will never be capable of giving you what you want.”That Fatal Assumption: if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work.The Entrepreneurial Seizure: the moment you decide it would be a great idea to start your own business.The technician suffering from an Entrepreneurial Seizure takes the work he loves to do and turns it into a job.

The Entrepreneur

The Manager

The Technician

People who are exceptionally good in business are so because of their insatiable need to know more.

“Your business is not your life.”

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"Once you recognize that the purpose of your life is not to serve your business, but that 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 fact of the matter is that we all have an Entrepreneur, Manager, and Technician inside us.”

“Most businesses are operated according to what the owner wants as opposed to what the business needs.”

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

“If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!”

“What you do in your model is not nearly as important as doing what you do the same way, each and every time.”

“A Mature business knows how it got to be where it is, and what it must do to get where it wants to go.”

“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.”

“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.”

“There’s a critical moment in every business when the owner hires his very first employee to do the work he doesn’t know how to do himself or doesn’t want to do.”

“The typical small business owner is only 10 percent Entrepreneur, 20 percent Manager, and 70 percent Technician.”

“Pretend that the business you own—or want to own—is the prototype, or will be the prototype, for 5,000 more just like it.”

“Documentation says, ‘This is how we do it here.’”

“Your job is to prepare yourself and your business for growth.

“The three phases of a business’s growth: Infancy, Adolescence, and Maturity.”

The Program is composed of seven distinct steps:

1.

Your Primary Aim

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But before you can determine what that role will be, you must ask yourself these questions:What do I value most?What kind of life do I want?What do I want my life to look like, to feel like? Who do I wish to be?Before you start your business, or before you return to it tomorrow, ask yourself the following questions:What do I wish my life to look like?How do I wish my life to be on a day-to-day basis?What would I like to be able to say I truly know in my life, about my life?How would I like to be with other people in my life—my family, my friends, my business associates, my customers, my employees, my community?How would I like people to think about me?What would I like to be doing two years from now? Ten years from now? Twenty years from now? When my life comes to a close?What specifically would I like to learn during my life—spiritually, physically, financially, technically, intellectually? About relationships?How much money will I need to do the things I wish to do? By when will I need it?

2.

Your Strategic Objective

3.

Your Organizational Strategy

4.

Your Management Strategy

5.

Your People Strategy

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A few rules…Never figure out what you want your people to do and then try to communicate a game out of itNever create a game for your people you’re unwilling to play yourselfMake sure there are specific ways of winning the game without ending itChange the game from time to time—the tactic, not the strategyNever expect the game to be self-sustaining. People need to be reminded of it constantlyThe game has to make senseThe game needs to be fun from time to timeIf you can’t think of a good game, steal one

6.

Your Marketing Strategy

7.

Your Systems Strategy

Go to work on your business rather than in it

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Ask yourself the following questions:How can I get my business to work, but without me?How can I get my people to work, but without my constant interferenceHow can I systematize my business in such a way that it 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?

Innovation is the mechanism through which your business identifies itself in the mind of your customer and establishes its individuality.

Quantification: the numbers related to the impact an Innovation makes.

“Orchestration is the elimination of discretion, or choice, at the operating level of your business.”

“Once you’ve innovated, quantified, and orchestrated something in your business, you must continue to innovate, quantify, and orchestrate it.”

“Think of your business as though it were the prototype for 5,000 more just like it.”

“Your Business Development Program is the vehicle through which you can create your Franchise Prototype.”