The E myth stand for the Entrepreneur myth, which is the myth that all business owners are entrepreneurs.
This book starts with a story of a young baker who is struggling in her business and her story carries on throughout the book as a real life example.
The basic point of this book is that too many of us spend time working "in" our business and not "on" our business. This leads business owners to a company that becomes flat, uninspiring, and unprofitable. There are 3 people-in-one that we are in our business: the Entrepreneur, the technician, and the manager. The entrepreneur is the visionary, the creativity, the dreamer, and the energy behind it all. The entrepreneur is happiest living in the future. The technician is the doer. The technician lives in the present and needs to stay busy by doing (a typical small business is 70% technician owned). The manager is the planner and craves order. The manager lives in the past. The challenge then becomes to keep these 3 in balance and not let one take over. The E Myth then talks about the three phases of a business's growth: Infancy, Adolescence, and Maturity.
In the infancy stage the owner and the business are one and the same. If you leave, there is no business left. The technician takes over at this point and does what they do best. Infancy ends when the owner realizes that the business cannot continue to run the way it has been. In order to survive, it needs to change. Most small businesses have 2 options at this point: close the doors and walk away or move on to the adolescence stage.
In the adolescence stage every business hires help. The kind of help they usually seek is another technician with experience. The owner starts getting time back and give up some of their responsibility. The quality of the work begins to decline and the owner realizes that no one is going to care as much as they do. In this stage the owner reaches beyond the comfort zone. There are several routes from here: A company can become small again, grow too fast and self destruct, or survival mode (where the owner doesn't leave and begins to break down mentally and physically).
The maturity stage is when a business knows how it got to be where it is, and what it must do to get where it wants to go. Many successful companies start out this way such as McDonald's, Disney, and IBM. They had a totally different perspective about what a business is and why it works.
The book also goes into a turn key business, franchising your business, your primary aim, and strategies for organizing, management, people, and marketing.
Overall this book had some very good take-aways. I can now recognize when either the technician, manager, or entrepreneur is taking over a certain aspect of our business and correct it. I love the statement that "to the Entrepreneur, the customer is always an opportunity." I believe this to be so true. If you go above the expectations of the customer, they will do your advertising for you. I'm not saying only use word of mouth to promote your business. I understand the value with having a website and social media presence, but word of mouth from happy and satisfied customers can greatly benefit your company. The parts of the books that I didn't care for was the constant reference to the bakery owner and her story. It seemed unnecessary and long winded. I think the information can speak for itself rather than have to keep going back to read her walk through the steps. Finally, I leave you with this wonderful quote: “The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.” – Don Juan from Carlos Castaneda’s A Separate Peace.
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