E-Myth Revisited
by Andrew Smith on 31/10/05 at 12:31 pm
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The Author of E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber, claims, "If you own a small business, or if you want to own a small business, this book was written for you…". Have a look at the book and comments by readers E-myth at Amazon.com. Gerber sites statistics showing that most small business fail in their first few years, and most franchise-type business succeed, and therefore we should all set up our business as if we were creating a franchise chain. He insists that this is particularly important if you set up your own company to escape your "job", and so your business should be able operate without 12 hours a day (7 days a week) of your own time. The way to do this is for every process in your company to be documented and housed in the operations manual so that even low-qualified employees will be able to run things (while you sip cocktails on the beach). After many years of working with small businesses Gerber has a finely-tuned insight into the challenges that budding entrepreneurs face, and there were many times when it felt like he was writing about my life and experiences. However, I’m not convinced that I want to turn our company into something resembling McDonald’s. As one comment on the Amazon site says: "I think they might be confusing good old organization and routine for a ’systems dependent business.’"
Andrew Smith is the pedantic systems guy behind Live Alchemy, a SA e-commerce company. Andrew writes for Ideate in an attempt to make the world a more efficient place. View more articles by Andrew Smith.
