Publisher's Weekly Review
Small business guru and best-selling author Gerber is an enthusiastic champion of small business owners, and his constant cheering underlies this latest attempt to provide a comprehensive plan for entrepreneurial success. The key messages here are similar to those of his previous books (The E-Myth Revisited, etc.): that ?knowing how to do the work of a business has nothing to do with building a business that works?; that entrepreneurs learn their skills through practice, practice, practice; and that anyone willing to adopt that same kind of discipline can be successful too. These principles are sound and practical, but Gerber?s articulation of them is often cloying. His book relies heavily on Platonic dialogues with his ?student? Sarah, the ever misty-eyed owner of a business called All About Pies. But the quasi-romantic tenor of their conversations is irritating. Equally distracting is Gerber?s impassioned mid-book confession detailing how even as he was succeeding as a small business guru, he was being sued for fraud, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and seriously not in control of his own far-from-excellent small company. While this confession lends credibility to his knowledge?he has personally been to the brink of small business failure and back?it may plant seeds of doubt within skeptical readers. But, ultimately, those who overlook this skepticism and plow through the soul-searching assignments that make up the first 66 pages of the book will be rewarded. For Gerber?s volume provides a wealth of practical guidelines, charts, forms (available online) and instructions on how to run, improve and manage a business of any size. And, by the end, readers will feel as though they?ve been given a full course of one-on-one coaching sessions with Gerber. For all its flaws, this is a book with a business plan that anyone could implement...and should want to. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Booklist Review
How can any executive or wannabe executives determine which book offers the best advice? Gerber focuses on the philosophy that netted him big bucks: don't work in your business, work on it. He extends this idea by way of the example of Sarah, owner of All about Pies,\b who has hit a roadblock with her business. Reenergizing, he says, means a reconnection with the original passion and vision, usually adopting a different scenario, and that leads to his analysis of seven disciplines that help make a world-class company: leadership, marketing, finances, management, client fulfillment, lead conversion, and lead generation. So, here is, if not the only source of good advice, at least an important source. --Barbara Jacobs Copyright 2005 Booklist
Excerpts
E-Myth Mastery The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World Class Company Chapter One The E-Myth Point of View "Begin as creation, become a creator. Never wait at a barrier. In this kitchen stocked with fresh food, Why sit content with a cup of warm water?" From Unseen Rain, Quatrains of RUMI by John Moyne and Coleman Barks And now we begin our journey together to find the entrepreneur, who he is, how he thinks, what he does, how he does it, how he moves mountains to make his dreams come true. Mountains on the inside of him, and mountains on the outside of him. Mountains of his imagination, and mountains with a stark overwhelming reality to them. What do mountains ask of the one who is determined to climb them? What preparation is in order? What role does your guide play in all this? How strong of mind and spirit does the one who would climb mountains truly need to be? You and I are going to ask all of these questions, over and over again. We will answer them, and then throw away those answers. We will discuss the harsh reality of them, and you will begin to understand them to be metaphors for something even bigger than the mountains we have set out to climb. Much bigger. Tragically, few of the people who start their own business think like entrepreneurs, act like entrepreneurs, dream like entrepreneurs, or succeed and fail like entrepreneurs. Even more tragically, this is a crime against their very own nature. Most small business owners spend their entire small business journey in the foothills without ever starting to climb. And what's worse, they never realize what they've done. By the time we're done with our journey, you will have learned, through your own experience, not only what entrepreneurship is, but what it is to you, what it is for you to take on the mantle of a true entrepreneur by doing work only true entrepreneurs do. You will learn how to build a World Class Company. You will learn how to create the extraordinary. You will learn how to find magic inside of yourself, the kind entrepreneurs are famous for, and how to tempt it out. And then, how to be gentle with it, love it, nurture it, play with it, coerce it, cajole it, massage it, console it, cry with it, and be firm with it. All of this, dear reader, you have inside of you. No matter who you think you are, no matter how you think you ought to think, this book can provide you with a completely new perspective on your life, and the business or businesses you create as you live it. You will discover that entrepreneurship is not a trait, quality, or characteristic possessed by a rare and special few. It belongs to each and every one of us. It lives inside us all. It is a legacy, a birthright, which we are free to nourish or ignore, to claim or reject, to pursue or avoid, to develop or not, so help us God. Entrepreneurship is, first of all, the power to create. But creation is not something that you do. Creation is something that is done through you. Creation is like music. My saxophone teacher, Merle Johnston, used to say to me, "Michael, you don't make music. Music finds you. Your job is to practice to get yourself ready." Likewise, your job is not to become an entrepreneur. It is not to create. Your job is to commit to the process of becoming an entrepreneur and then to practice what entrepreneurs do so that entrepreneurship can find you when you've practiced enough to be ready. Commitment and practice. Commitment and practice. Because, just as I found the power to create music through the practice of music, you can find the power to create a World Class Company through the practice of entrepreneurship. Understand, the power to create a World Class Company doesn't come from the practice. It comes from deep down within you. It's a calling, a potentiality; it's ineffable, unexplainable, and enormously exciting. It comes from your connection to your passion. Practice, I believe, is your signal to the power -- to the passion -- that you have taken it seriously. That you are committed. That you are earnest about the gift the passion will bestow on you. How do you know it will? Commit and you'll discover the trust over time. And even when you're completely unsure, as I'm certain many of you reading this are, even as I'm speaking to you, there's a knowingness in you, isn't there? That somehow you just know that entrepreneurship is your calling. Unfortunately, the calling is insufficient on its own. Unless you commit to the practice of entrepreneurship, unless you get down to the study and the form and the skill-set of entrepreneurship, it is most likely that your entrepreneurial calling will turn into a nightmare of unbelievable proportions. You will be completely unprepared for what you are called to do. I know. Because I've lived through that nightmare. I know because the coaches in my company have lived through countless nightmares with their clients. Nightmares about running out of money. Nightmares about losing an absolutely essential account. Nightmares about losing their marriage, or a significant relationship, or their kids, about not knowing what to do next as a catastrophe sits there on their doorstep just waiting to happen. I know about nightmares. And I know the toll they take on people who have been taken by the impulse to start a small business only to find out too late that they were completely unprepared for what it demanded of them. Nightmares are sweaty, painful, fearful, monstrous. They take your breath away. They put a bleak, flat, and hopeless face on reality that destroys any urge we might have had to create, to build a successful business. E-Myth Mastery The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World Class Company . Copyright © by Michael E. Gerber. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from E-Myth Mastery: The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World-Class Company by Michael E. Gerber All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
