My business life was changed by a book called The E Myth. In fact, more accurately it’s called The E Myth Revisited. If you’re in business and you haven’t heard of it, you should have!
When I first discovered this book, I hadn’t been in business for that long. It was one of the top books that is on everyone’s list of must read books. It’s by a gentleman called Michael Gerber.
It was originally written years ago in the 70’s or 80’s. Michael started as a business consultant way back then in the 70’s I think and has consulted for tens of thousands of businesses, and has taken the E Myth corporation worldwide.
After hearing about the book, I got a copy and I read it. The way Michael explains the process in his book is simply amazing. He basically talks to a lady who bakes cakes in her shop and is struggling like the rest of us. He makes it real because he answers her questions, explains how things could be different and gives examples.
This is really the best way to do it, rather than just sharing some boring business management explanation.
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After starting to read the book, I got super busy and had to put it down for a while. I went off on a holiday and I picked the book up again. I got back into it and I came across a little diagram that showed me an organizational chart that really resonated with me.
The chart explained that instead of drawing up your organizational chart or imagining it now, you need to imagine how the business is going to grow — what it would look like when it’s done.
This could take five or ten years to complete, but right now if its just you, you are responsible for every single one of those positions and your job is to gradually replace yourself with new people to do those positions, and hopefully to do them better than you. You show that how it’s done, give them a system for doing it and then check up on them occasionally called management.
I’ve struggled with that for years, and that was my “aha” moment. There’s plenty of other “aha” moments in the book. The basic premise of it is that you have a goal in life, you’ve got to find your goal and your aim in life. Your business is one of tools of helping you work toward those goals.
That is why you need to make sure that you have goals in your business.
It’s called a “strategic objective” in The E myth and what you do is you write it down, and you write it from the perspective of when it’s done. Remember I said you set these goals like your organizational chart for the next five years, for example.
Now, write a date and write out your goals and business plans as if that organizational chart is your reading plan. That is your success and you’re recapping what you’ve done, where you’re at, or talking to your staff about what you’ve done.
Once you decide where you’re going to go, you need to decide how you’re going to get there. Then you figure out a way to measure where you are.
Where you are now?
At this point, no one’s probably ever heard of you. A couple of years down the road, maybe some people have heard of you. Five years from now, everyone knows you as the leading brand. You need to work out a scale, and you need to measure yourself against that scale.
These are called key strategic indicators. It gives you something to measure.
Now that you have figured out all of these areas for your five year plan, now you need to reverse that and figure out year four year three, year two, and so on. Then break it down into quarterly aims and then you measure yourself along the way.
To create those extra positions, you don’t create job descriptions you create position agreements. People have parameters of what they do, not some job description. They also have systems.
You’re going to create systems for everything. There are ways they show how to create an efficient system but then your systems need to be updated every now and again.
These things need reviewing and can be improved upon all the time. Once you’ve created a system, your job is then to try and improve those system and that system can be for operational purposes such as accounting.
These systems will help you review all the systems you have in place, because trust me, you’ll end up with a lot of systems over a period of time. How are you going to review them?
They don’t all need reviewing. But the systems are there to help you and your staff become efficient and happy. Systems are there for opening and closing your store, doing your accounting, etc. For everything, there should be a system in place. It may sound petty to you but trust me it makes an efficient and happy staff.
All the systems are developed by the people that use them, not by the management. They have ones for accounting, quality control, and of course marketing and PR. Once we started applying The E Myth system to our line of business, we decided to join the mastery course and they gave us a personal coach –Melinda.
Book Recommendation
Since this whole podcast has been about The Emyth Revisited, that is our book recommendation for this week. It is by Michael Gerber.
This book will change your life and I think every bank, every small business association, every governmental business association should give out that book as essential reading for free to anyone who’s thinking of setting up a business.
It will open up their eyes. Teach them a whole world of things in just a simple book. Please read it and if you have experienced something similar, let me know. Email me. I’d love to hear your story.
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What books have you read that changed your life?
