The E-Myth Revisited is an older, classic work written by small business guru Michael Gerber who has written a plethora of books, many of which are targeted towards people who want to start their own small business. He hammers home the concept that many people who start their own businesses are technicians, people who have a particular talent or skill that they enjoy doing. However, the skills required to start and operate a business are different and more diverse than that of a technician. To illustrate, lets consider a lady, Jane, who is great at baking pies. Everyone loves Jane’s pies, everyone knows that she makes the best pies, and some suggest that she start her own business baking and selling pies. The technician in her knows how to bake great pies, but she will need to learn new and different skills in order to start and operate a successful small business.
Jane, the technician, is a worker-bee, busy baking pies and packaging them for customers to buy. So far so good. But in her new business, she is also the manager, who must make sure that operations and finances run smoothly. In addition, Jane, the budding entrepreneur, must set the goals for the business and develop the strategies necessary to achieve the goals. Because she makes the best pies, more and more people start buying them. Soon there is a lot more work than she can do by herself so she hires her first employees. Employees must be trained and paid; administrative tasks increase. As her business grows, the demands of the business may overwhelm Jane, the technician, who no longer has time to do the work she loves; baking pies. Michael does a great job of developing the concept that any new business should be designed and developed on the franchise model. He does not necessarily advocate buying a franchise but makes the case that franchises have a much higher success rate than general small business start ups. The main reason for this is that the franchise model builds in the systems, standards, and uniformity that are necessary for smooth running operations and enables the business to be replicated consistently, many times over.
Michael Gerber has written a number of other books including The E-Myth, E-Myth Mastery, The E-Myth Enterprise, and The E-Myth Contractor. There is a certain amount of redundancy in this series. If you are fairly new to business, this book will teach you a lot you need to know about yourself and your startup, and might even save you a lot of headaches.
More details at: The E-Myth Revisited
