If you answered yes, I recommend Michael Gerber’s book, “The E-myth Revisited.“  I have to say, that out of all the books I have read on business or entrepreneurship this is one of the best.

Something like 90% of all small businesses fail within the first 5 years.  Why? If you are in business for yourself now you may be acutely aware. If you aren’t, let’s look at the scenario.

You…are some kind of technician, perhaps you are a programmer, engineer, carpenter, plumber, cake baker, or retail worker. Whatever the case, you have probably thought…what am I doing here working for this moron. I could do better. How can he be my boss,? I am smarter, and better, and know what customers want.

You may in fact be smarter, better, know your customers better, and what not. And, you are used to servicing customers or clients as a technician. But a business is more than the work that it does, and an entrepreneur needs to be more than a technician.

According to Gerber, this technician mentality is one of the main stumbling blocks.  In the book, Gerber describes the entrepreneur as having three personalities  all fighting for dominance.

There is the entrepreneur. This person views the world through rose colored glasses and is usually somewhere off in future thinking about next year’s sales projections or company expansion.

Then there is the manager. This personality seeks order and views the business in terms of systems and processes. The manager views the technician and entrepreneur both as cogs in the wheel. This person is more focused on present operational details.

The technician is the one who thinks. “If you want something done right you have to do it yourself.” This is a person who works for work’s sake and who can’t understand why they can’t work themselves out of a problem.

Each of these personalities fights for dominance, but because we usually migrate into entrepreneurship after being technicians that is usually what we fall back on when things take a downturn. That is where we go wrong.

We need to understand that working hard “IN” our business will not make things better. We need to learn to take a deep breath and work “ON” our business.

If you want to learn more about saving your business, I highly recommend reading the E-Myth Revisited. Applying the principles in this book will save you a mountain of heart and head ache. Big praise for Michael Gerber.

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