>>E-Myth
Articles
The
Small Business Gospel, According to Gerber
Reproduced with Kind permission from "Inside
Business Success"
Some of his pithy lines read like business heresy,
but thousands are true believers in the Michael Gerber small
business method. Christian Dige turns Inquisitor:
MICHAEL GERBER'S PASSION IS small business.
His ground-breaking book, The E-Myth, has sold over 500,000
copies worldwide and the Gerber Institute has coached some
15,000 small business people on the art of success.
Christian Dige called his Los Angeles headquarters
to uncover some of that Gerber wisdom.
The E-Myth has
been a huge success. Can you encapsulate in a few sentences
the message of the book?
Rather than being entrepreneurs, most people
who go into business are technicians who have suffered from
an entrepreneurial seizure. Technicians are people who have
been working for some-one else and then suddenly decide they
can't stand working for a boss any longer. However, they make
a fatal assumption that because they know how to do the technical
work, such as engineering, graphic design or consulting, they
know how to build a company that works. That's a fatal assumption
because it's just not true. So, they create a company that
focuses on them, or people like them. In the process they
miss the real opportunity, and that is to create a company
that works independently of the specific people in it, because
there is a system created. A truly entrepreneurial company
is systems-based; it can thus produce predictable results
over and over and over again. Unfortunately, most companies
aren't like that.
How does a business
owner go about implementing this system you speak of - what
are the simple steps to getting started on the right track?
First it requires the business owner to see
the truth about themselves: to see that they are doing it,
doing it, doing it ; they are busy, busy, busy - day after
day; the fact that they are working 12 hours a day, seven
days a week; that they are consumed by their company and that
they are now going to do something about it.
Then the next step is to determine what you
really want. What you want your life to be. I call this the
'creation of the primary aim', which is the picture of what
you want your life to look like when it's finally done.
What does my company
have to look like when it's finally done in order to give
me what I want?
The next thing to ask is: "What does my
company have to look like when it's finally done in order
to give me what 1 want?" What l say in The E-Myth, and
to all the 15,000 small-business clients I've dealt with since
I founded my company in 1977, is that the sole reason an entrepreneur
creates a business is to sell it.
It is therefore crucial that your business is
a place you go to work on, as opposed to work in. It must
be a company that works independently, so you're able to grow
it - and ultimately sell it.
And that is the golden parachute of the small-business
owner. The ability to create an asset called 'My Business',
and to be able to sell that asset, not as a job for the next
owner. But as a truly vital and explosive enterprise.
Over the years we've learnt that anybody can
do this.
What makes a
successful business owner?
What it takes, first of all, is vision, When
I say 'vision' I know that it can become a very empty word,
because it sounds tike rhetoric. What it means is clarity.
It is the ability to see something in the future that doesn't
exist today. They need to be an inventor and be able to think
of their company as a product.
The second thing the owner needs to be is a
manager. So not only does one need to be an entrepreneur who
invents the company; one needs to understand the work of a
manager.
The work of the manager is to invent the systems
through which the visions of the entrepreneur can be manifested
into reality on the operating level of the company. The manager
is the enabler.
Finally, the third role which must be understood
in each company is the role of the technician. The technician's
role is to put it all into practice. The technician has to
implement the system that the manager has created to manifest
the vision of the entrepreneur.
Once these steps are grasped, suddenly the creator
of the company understands the relationship between the entrepreneur,
the manager and the technician, how symbiotic those three
roles are and how absolutely essential they are to the end
product.
And all this
is encapsulated in one person?
Inside you, inside me, inside every one of us
is the inventor, is the enabler, is the producer. If you don't
understand the relationship between those three parts in you,
if those aren't balanced, then you can't possibly go to work
on your company without creating confusion.
The other thing which is essential is dogged
intent. I call this 'strategic intent'. This is to persevere
through all of the hardships and all of the not-knowing that
takes place as we are doing something that has not been done
before.
The entrepreneurial vision is about doing the
impossible not the possible, Answering the question: 'What
is the one thing I could do in my company that is impossible
to do?' would immediately transform any business; and that's
what drives every extraordinary entrepreneurial company, however
small it might be.
The interesting thing about the impossible is
that it is not as impossible as we think. Extraordinary companies
are only companies that are doing ordinary things in an extraordinary
way.
So, it's on time every time, exactly as promised, or we pay
for it? That's extraordinary! You don't have to do something
incredibly unique: you just have to do it in an incredibly
powerful way.
Gerber on leadership
Leadership is always being in front of' the
pack. A leader is someone who can see what needs to be done
before anybody else can see it. It's being able to manifest
the energy necessary to pursue it and to engage other people
to do it. It's being able to persevere when everyone else
has decided it's not possible.
Gerber on courage
Courage is critical, because we find over and
over and over again that we don't know what we are doing.
Not knowing what you're doing, but being willing to do it
anyway, is courage.
Courage comes from the commitment to do what I don't know
and to risk being stupid, risk being wrong and to risk it
again.
Gerber on finding
the right people
The right people are all around us but the key
is knowing what we want. So finding the right staff is really
a product of telling the right story. And the story is the
story of your life.
The story is the story of your vision. The story
is the story of your passion. The story is the story of the
big idea you're pursuing.
In the process of telling that story people
are attracted to you like a magnet.
In fact, if there is no magnet, you always find
yourself with the wrong people.
Gerber on customer
service
Customer service starts at the beginning of
the company. You have to see a clearly perceived need and
satisfy it better than anyone else. In creating a company,
Fred Smith of Federal Express says there are only two words
that describe his company: the promise and the process. What
Customer service starts at the beginning of the company. You
have to see a clearly perceived need and satisfy it better
than anyone else. In creating a company, Fred Smith of Federal
Express says there are only two words that describe his company:
the promise and the process. What we're here to do when you
'absolutely, positively need to get it overnight', and then
how to do it.
"Extraordinary companies
are only companies that
are doing ordinary things
in an extraordinary way."
Customer service can only be done in the context
of knowing exactly what we are here to do, exactly how we're
here to do it, and how you can create that capability and
consistency so the customer is served beyond their wildest
expectations.
Remember: no matter how much customer service
training you do, you'll never satisfy the customer completely
because you'll always be trying to make up for what you couldn't
do and apologising for it.
As a customer, I'm not interested in meeting
pleasant people, I'm interested in getting a stunning result.
So ask yourself: "What is the result I am here to produce
and how do I produce it?" Those are the core components
of any company. Service is an issue that we make a lot of,
because there is so little of it out there. But there's so
little of it because most companies are dependent on operating
in anarchy and dysfunction.
We are constantly trying to find the magic solution,
how to teach our people to be more interested in the customer.
Well, the fact of the matter is, if you create a company that
is interested in the customer, so much so that it discovers
how to do what's impossible, infallibly, every single time,
then you'll have astonishing results.
Customer service will not be an issue: the customer
is always served.
Gerber on selling
Selling is not what people think it is. Selling
isn't closing, selling is opening. When Federal Express says:
"When you absolutely, positively need to get it overnight",
that's the true way of selling. The way of selling is to start
with a promise that people immediately wish to believe is
true. Then you validate that promise and deliver on it. The
first step is lead generation.
The second step is lead conversion. Lead conversion
provides validation for your company's ability to keep that
promise and converts the active interest of the prospective
client into a paying customer. Client fulfilment is the process
by which you keep that promise. This ultimately leads to the
point where selling is not necessary: it's simply making a
promise and then validating that promise.
To do this, compile the data at your fingertips
that enables you to prove to the prospective customer that
the promise wasn't simple empty words. And as you do that
over and over and over again, selling becomes absolutely unnecessary
and you become known as the company that does it.
Gerber on marketing
The purpose of marketing is to determine the
promise. The purpose of management is to determine the process
of keeping that promise. It's then a mailer of lead generation,
lead conversion, client fulfilment over and over and over
again; all the time while you're continually improving each
of the stages.
What is the best
bit of advice you ever received?
Practice three hours a day, and it came from
my saxophone teacher. He told me that he only teaches people
who want to be the best saxophone players in the world and
in order to do that I have to practice three hours a day.
I was eight at the time and I did it. I never
learned more about myself and the world from anything I have
ever done than understanding what the power of practice can
do.
For more information, contact
Essential Business Solutions on 1 800 350 336.
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