For every person who starts a business of their own, or has a small business, Michael E. Gerber’s book, “The E Myth Revisited” should be a required read. I’m going to post once a week on ideas from this book. For those who have never read it, I’ll boil it down for you, although you should get a copy anyway, I’m only going to talk about the lessons, yet there is much more. Gerber is a wonderful story-teller. For those who have read it, this will be a refresher of a wonderful business-self-help classic that stands the test of time, and it is one of those few books that you find yourself reading over and over…
There is a huge error that probably most budding business builders make. They assume that if they know how to do the technical work of a business, that by extension, they know how to run a business that does that technical work. These are two completely different things. It does not follow that knowing how to do technical work means you know anything about how to run a business. You may be a great and talented plumber, salesperson, engineer, software designer, whatever, but what do those have to do with running a business?
To the technician, a business is just a place to go to work. It’s great, the boss is dead, in fact, there is no boss. You see, the entrepreneur died shortly after getting the bright idea, that’s when the technician in you took over and made a business by doing the work. Knowing how to do the work is the businessperson’s greatest hinderance to the health of the business. Why? Because the technician can’t run a business the way it should be run- like a business!
The technician used to love the work, now it has changed. It is just a chore. The purpose is gone. You’ve lost that special connection with your work. Now you HAVE to do the work. But don’t forget, there are the other two aspects of your business personality; the manager and the entrepreneur. All three wants to be the boss but none of them wants to have a boss. They go into business together so they can fire the boss. And the conflict begins…