Sunday Book Club: E-Myth
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Today’s book review is ‘E-Myth’ by Michael Gerber, which explains the Entrepreneurial Myth that most people who start small businesses are entrepreneurs. The book follows the story about ‘Sarah’ a small business owner with a good heart and good intentions that is frustrated and struggling with her business. One of her main struggles is with her inner technician to embrace her inner manager and entrepreneur. Michael sits down with Sarah and explains to her step by step, how to bring out the manager and entrepreneur within. He also helps her see what she did incorrectly when starting her business ‘All About Pies’ and what she must do to correct them in order to have the success she wants and deserves.
In the beginning of Sarah’s path, we find out that she, like so many others before her, had an ‘entrepreneurial seizure’ where she, the technician, became obsessed with running her own business, which led to a fatal assumption that ‘if you know the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work.’ It is fatal because knowing the technical work and running a business are two completely different things. She made the mistake of seeing it as a place to go to work rather than running a business. People like Sarah who experience the entrepreneurial seizure by turning their business into a job or a chore all go through the same 4 step process: exhilaration, terror, exhaustion and finally, despair, which is the state we find Sarah currently in. This has a lot to do with the fact that she didn’t realize she was like so many other small business owners that have three personalities broken down into different percentages: 10% Entrepreneur, 20% Manager, and 70% Technician. These are percentages that need to be balanced for every small business if it is to operate and function with any kind of efficiency.
Small businesses have three different stages: infancy, adolescence and maturity. Progressing to each stage requires growth and a willingness for a business owner to step out of his or her comfort zone if they are to achieve the level of success they seek. It is said in this book that most small businesses fail for four different reasons: not understanding the entrepreneurial myth, not embracing the turn-key revolution, ignoring the business development process, and not systematically applying a business development process.
Gerber explains to Sarah how she needs to systemize her business, much like a McDonald’s franchise. That she needed to create a business whose results are systems dependent rather than people dependent to create a turn-key business that runs itself. She discovered that it is her job as the owner to build these systematic tools and teach people how to use them so her business could stand out as a place of impeccable order, subconsciously telling her customer that she and her people know what they’re doing.
Sarah found that there were several important questions that she needed to answer: How can I get my business to work without me? How can I get my people to work without my interference? How can I systemize my business so that it can be replicated 5,000 times? How can I own my business and still be free of it? how can I spend my time doing the work I love to do rather than the work I have to do? The process of answering these questions is the E-Myth Mastery Program. This is implemented with a business developmental program that consists of 7 steps: primary aim, strategic objective, organizational strategy, management strategy, people strategy, marketing strategy and systems strategy. While discussing each strategy step by step, Michael explains to Sarah how they are all interdependent rather than independent of one another and must be treated as such if her business is to survive.
As the book progresses, Sarah begins to change her attitude and sees light at the end of the tunnel. No longer desperate and despondent about her struggles, she begins to see the errors of her ways and how she can correct them by implementing the systems and tools Michael has taught her. With a hopeful and optimistic outlook, Sarah has proven that the wealth of knowledge found in ‘E-Myth’ is a must for any small business owner that is either struggling with their business or ready to take the next steps from infancy to adolescence to maturity and how to avoid the pitfalls that await them with each step forward that they take…. all the while, remembering a quote from the beginning of the book that states: ‘the only difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that the warrior sees every situation as a challenge while the ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.’
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Video Communication Can Save Your Life
Check out this amazing story on how a webcam saved a man’s life. [via Yahoo! News ]
Sunday Book Club: CRUSH IT!
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Today’s Sunday Book Club features Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk. An eye-popping account on how he was able to brand himself and leverage the internet and social media into a $60-million business. He has made many appearances on television shows which include, but are not limited to: The Today Show, Mad Money with Jim Cramer, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch and The Dr. Oz show. I think you get the point.
The book starts off detailing his humble beginnings as the son of poor immigrants from Belarus, coming to the United States when Gary was only 3 years old. Using his intelligence, hustle and determination, his father was able purchase and expand a small liquor store in New Jersey just 5 years later. He goes on to tell how he got involved in the business many years later and transformed it from making $4-million to $10-million in 1 year and up to $20-million 2 years after that. It is here where he learned the life experiences that ‘scarcity creates desire’ and ‘people want to be told what’s good and valuable.’
Gary is a master at recognizing and attaching himself to the trends and launched winelibrarytv.com in 2006 to create brand equity. It’s not difficult to see why he is successful in what he does because he has a genuine, deep passion about wine and it is telling from his vast amount of knowledge on the subject. He knows the business inside and out, but he has a fun loving approach to it, evidenced by some videos of him (scroll down to the ones with Conan O’Brien) comparing certain wines to dirt, rocks, socks, grass and a sheep’s butt just to name a few. When watching these hilarious videos, I laughed my tail off and had an ‘a-ha!’ moment in doing so…. he not only loves what he does, but he has FUN doing it.
He proves in this book and on his blog that authenticy and transparency is what increases his value to others. That when it comes to marketing your niche, whatever it is, you need to answer a resounding ‘YES!’ to these two questions: “is (blank) my ultimate passion?” and “am I good enough to be the best blogger on (blank) in the world?” If that’s not the case, you need to do some soul searching and find out what is your passion because it is absolutely essential in order to get your word out and lure and attract your audience to follow you.
Gary goes on to talk about some great strategies and tools you need to use and tactics on how to use them for self branding on your blog that includes but is not limited to: Facebook, Wordpress, Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Viddler, UStream.tv, Ping.fm, and TubeMogul just to name a few (a complete list can be found here) and that having authenticity and being yourself when utilizing these tools gives you the best chance for success. Using them allows you keep in closer contact with your audience and keep a real-time finger on the pulse of your customer. He also talks about how and when to monetize your blog in the form of advertising, speaking engagements, affiliate programs and retailing.
Gary fills this book with inspiring wisdom and knowledge that he has gained over the years while adding a reality check to it at the same time. He stresses that you have to be able to adapt and change when you’ve made a mistake, to look out for and capitalize on new trends that will come in the future and jump on them, and to always think ahead and have more concern on what your legacy will be than on how much money you will make. Not to mention, the best marketing strategy ever. A strategy so important that he devoted an entire chapter to it that consists of one word: CARE.
‘Crush It!’ is a definite game changer for me, as it is filled with information that I plan to implement into my business for literally years to come while remembering to follow Gary’s secret to success, which is to live by three rules: love your family, work superhard and live your passion!
