The E-Myth Entrepreneur: What Every Small Business Owner Needs To Hear

Michael E. Gerber is the founder of Michael E. Gerber Companies and E-Myth Worldwide. He has had nearly 100,000 business/coaching clients over his career and has consistently been called “the World’s #1 Small Business Guru” — the entrepreneurial and small business thought leader who has impacted the lives of millions of small business owners and hundreds of thousands of companies worldwide for over 40 years. He is the #1 New York Times' bestselling author of The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, Awakening the Entrepreneur Within: How Ordinary People Can Create Extraordinary Companies, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, E-Myth Mastery: The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World-Class Company, The E-Myth Real Estate Investor: Why Most Real Estate Investment Businesses Don't Work And What To Do About It, The E-Myth Contractor: Why Most Contractors' Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, and the new book The E-Myth Chief Financial Officer: Why Most Small Businesses Run Out of Money and What to Do about It.   Podcast Highlights Who is Michael Gerber? Michael didn’t find his path in life until he was 41 years old. His brother-in-law owned an advertising agency and was working with a high tech client that was having trouble converting the leads they were getting for them. He wanted to bring in Michael to help even though Michael believed that he didn’t know anything about business. The conversation started off pretty strangely, since Michael truly didn’t know anything about that client’s business, so he just started asking questions. That was how he discovered that just because someone owns a business, that doesn’t mean they understand what business is. That was also when Michael realized that he did know something about business, and that is that selling is a system. Working with that first client was the beginning of Michael’s business, although he didn’t think about it that way. The more he worked with them, the more he realized how critical what it was that he was doing for them. It went beyond sales, it was transforming the way they thought about the business of business and the purpose of them being there. After a moment of clarity in a McDonald’s, Michael realized that the idea of the system is what’s missing with every client he had been working with. The trouble was Michael’s brother-in-law didn’t see his business the way Michael saw all his client’s businesses. He could never truly take in what Michael was saying to him, this lead to him bringing someone in to replace Michael named Tom Travisono. After working with Michael for a couple of weeks, he decided to join him and they started the first business development coaching company on the planet. Technician vs Entrepreneur The truth is when you start a small company, you are doomed to misunderstand what the reality of starting a small company is. That’s why the majority of small companies fail. 1 out of 10 businesses will reach their 10th anniversary, but that doesn’t mean they’ve succeeded. They’ve just persisted harder and longer than others. You can’t learn everything that must be known to operate a successful company, but your company needs to. The question then becomes “what is it that I absolutely need to know to start my company right?” The E-Myth Dreaming Room The absolutely critical role that you need to fill as an entrepreneur is that of the founding entrepreneur. Not the person that sells real estate, the person who designs, builds, and launches the company that sells real estate. At the heart of the entrepreneur there are four critical personalities. If you are going to play the entrepreneur game, you need to understand the rules if you want to win. We are born to create, and the creator is the entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is composed of the Dreamer, the Thinker, the Storyteller, and the Leader. Before you set out, you have to set the foundation for what you’re going to do. The Dreamer says “I have a dream”, the Thinker says “I have a vision”, the Storyteller says “I have a purpose”, and the Leader says “I have a mission.” Until you understand those four things, you don’t have the substance you need to launch your company. Are these systems built for today or for the future? A company is a product for sale. The eightfold path is the method that Michael teaches that deals with both where you are today and where you intend to be five years from now. The first step is the dream, then the vision, purpose, and mission. The following step is the job, which is the client fulfillment system. Then comes the practice, which is the client acquisition system. The next step is the business, which is what Michael defines as seven turnkey practices. The final step is the enterprise, which is seven turnkey businesses. Every person that has a creator within, all their job is to go to work on their life in a way that transforms it and creates the systems that enable them to replicate themselves successfully. When Michael first started his company, he and his business partner spent three months talking about it. Those three months produced the dream, vision, purpose, and mission. Reference: The E-Myth Chief Financial Officer: Why Most Small Businesses Run Out of Money and What to Do about It, Michael Gerber Michael’s Takeaway Let go of your doubts and concerns, and go to RadicalU.com and enroll. Michael Gerber has gone through everything that small business owners could theoretically go through. Go to work on your company of one instead of in your company of one. Waking up the entrepreneur within is the primary work every single one of us must do to understand why we are here on the planet. Enroll at RadicalU.com and begin the journey.   Links: freebook.michaelegerber.com radicalu.com Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show on iTunes!