Thursday, March 11, 2010

Gerber Awakens the Entrepreneur Within

I love Michael Gerber. More specifically, I love his book The E-Myth Revisited. I wish every small business owner in the world would read it. I mention it very frequently when I speak. After after years of doing so, I am amazed that every audience has a lot of people who haven't read this book.

Why is this book so important? That's easy: Standardized processes and procedures. That became the KPEnterprises mantra in 1995 and it's essentially what I provide in my books. One time at a conference a partner told me that consultants may not be able to come up with standardized processes but they can sure follow a checklist. "Keep giving us checklists!"

Gerber has written several books since The E-Myth Revisited. The E-Myth Manager, E-Myth Mastery, etc. They're all good, but pale in comparison to The E-Myth Revisited. So . . .

I was extremely pleased to pick up Awakening the Entrepreneur Within: How Ordinary People Can Create Extraordinary Companies. Immediately I found many nuggets of wisdom. Here are a few. Remember that the book goes into detail on why these things are true.

- "An entrepreneur is an inventor, although few inventors are entrepreneurs." Same is true with technicians. Every entrepreneur is a technician of some kind but few technicians are entrepreneurs.

- "An entrepreneur invents new businesses. All other inventors invent new products. To the entrepreneur, the business he or she invents is a product, a unique product that stands out in a world of ordinary business products and, through its uniqueness, captures the attention and imagination of the people for whom it was invented: its customer, its employees, its suppliers, and its lenders and investors."

- "While being an entrepreneurial business is not a guarantee of success, failing to be an entrepreneurial business is a guarantee of failure."

His analogy to show business is great:
- "To be caught up in a slow-or no-growth business is to be doomed to show up every day to perform in a show nobody enjoys."

- "What an entrepreneur creates has meaning, and that's why it creates money. It doesn't work the opposite way: Creating money does not give the created thing meaning."

- To create a meaningful business . . . "You must reach much, much deeper than simply creating more choices, or lower prices, or faster delivery. No, in the age of the entrepreneur, in this age of the impersonal dreamer, you must kick ass in ways no one every thought possible."

Is your business kicking ass or just surviving?

Is there passion in your business, or do you show up every day to put on a show no one wants to see, with employees who don't care about the show any more than the clients you're not bringing in the door? You know, as strange as it sounds, a recession is a great time to push the reset button and change your business so you have passion for what you do.

Go do what brings passion into your business. Kick ass.

Anyway, I'm only half done with the book but I'm loving it. We'll probably sell it at SMB Books. Not there yet, so go get it at Amazon.

It's less than $11. Just go buy it.


:-)



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2 comments:

  1. I tried to order the E-myth revisited and it jumps $4 after it goes to the cart.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jon - Ping me direct and we'll take care of you. [email protected]

    ReplyDelete

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