Symptoms
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“Some days I am really not sure how I am going to handle the challenges”
- “I’m just a plumber/engineer etc, nothing in my previous training or experience prepared me for this.”
- You keep facing new challenges that you don’t feel equipped to handle
Michael Gerber Unravels the Myth of the Entrepreneur
Michael E. Gerber is an entrepreneur, small business guru, and the bestselling author of five books, including his latest, E-Myth Mastery.
What is the E-Myth point of view?
Gerber: The E-Myth view is that people who go into business for themselves are not the entrepreneurs we think they are. Rather, they are what I call technicians suffering from entrepreneurial seizures.
Would-be entrepreneurs believe in what I call the fatal assumption: that knowing how to do the technical work means you know how to build a business.
The consultant creates a consultancy, the accountant sets up an accountancy practice, and the attorney starts a legal firm. They all get to work doing what they know how to do. Would-be entrepreneurs believe in what I call the fatal assumption: that knowing how to do the technical work means you know how to build a business.
But it doesn’t work because they spend their time working in the business rather doing what entrepreneurs do, which is to work on the business.
What makes people believe they can translate a technical skill into a business if they don’t know how to run a business?
Gerber: Well, that’s a big question. In fact it’s the one I write about in all of my books. The underlying theme is that three personalities reside inside of every person (and, by extension, in every company): the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician. The entrepreneur works at the enterprise level, the manager at the business level, and the technician at the practice level.
Most of us have an imbalance of the three personalities, and the technician is dominant. But the manager is probably at least as unrealized as the entrepreneur. The domination of the technician keeps most small businesses from growing.
Whether you are a consultant, an attorney, or a doctor, if you are only a technician, your practice is limited by what you are able to do in the amount of time you have and by how much you can be compensated for that. You can always add helpers, for example, an administrative support person. But if you add people, they eat up revenue that you would otherwise get.
There’s enormous resistance to do that. You’ll think, “I won’t get somebody else to do that. I’ll do it myself because what I’d be paying them would come out of my end.”
It’s a real trap.
Gerber: Absolutely. On the other hand, the true entrepreneur knows that work on the business is absolutely essential. You have to work on your consulting practice while you’re working in it to build a turnkey practice that can be replicated. The minute you’re able to do that, you begin to create a business. Then you’re at the level of the manager.”
