The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
This post is a guest review by my brother Zachary Henak, of the book The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
Let’s get straight to the key point of the book: free yourself of your business by working “ON it” instead of “IN it.” This is done, as described in the book, by creating systems to be relied upon, so that the owner doesn’t have to be.
There are many useful tools that the book provides to people who are either:
1. Thinking of starting a business
2. Up to their eyeballs in their small business
3. Related to someone in the field
4. Want to work for a small business
5. Simply want to be able to talk about it
I was given this book at a State Farm “Career Understanding” session. It is the second step in an eight-step process of becoming a State Farm Agent. They gave it to us because it does a wonderful overview of big picture thinking. Digging not only into the business, but the business as a reflection of you (the business owner).
E-Myth starts out by outlining the three people that act out within us.
+ The Technician
+ The Manager
+ The Entrepreneur
These are outlined, and explanation is given in order to be able to deal with imbalances between the three.
The e-myth actually reads more like a novel at times, which is nice. It follows the story of Sarah; a technician who goes through an entrepreneurial “seizure”, as they call it, and starts a small pie shop. However, she goes in thinking she is really good at making pies and thus thinks she will make pies as a job in her business. The narrator shows her the downfall of this approach.
Then the narrator/author, Michael E. Gerber, takes her through the process of teaching her the importance of creating systems that are replicable and support her business. Along with bits and pieces of helpful information like “blue suits improve sales by 10-16%”. Gerber teaches by giving her (and us as the reader) the tools to balance being an Entrepreneur, Technician, and Manager working ON her business, instead of just baking pies IN her business.
Mr. Gerber along with having well over ten years of experience consulting small businesses, start ups and entrepreneurs, he is also founder and CEO of “E-Myth World Wide”. The company is unabashedly plugged many times throughout the book which also gives it the flare of a giant textual advertisement.
Although the book is primarily focused on improving small businesses as a systems, there is a large self-help component that brings some emotion and inward direction to your thought process as you read the book. I would almost say it has an Opera meets Bloomberg feel to it.
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October 30th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
This is the book that got me started on my entrepreneurial journey! “I am a leader. I am called upon to do the work of leadership.”
I feel that this book is really great to bring out the entrepreneurial spirit in someone. It goes over some key theories about what makes a good company. To find out more about the specifics in making a great company, I suggest reading E-Myth Mastery.
- Jun Loayza