The E-Myth is a great insight to what American Small Business owners think.

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Melanie Osowski                MLR 443

        A Review of The E-Myth, by Michael Gerber

        The E-Myth is a great insight to what American Small Business owners think and how they have operated, and mostly the erroneous thinking of many small business owners.   According to Gerber, “The greatest business people I have ever known is that they have a genuine fascination for the truly astonishing impact little things done exactly right can have on the world.”  There are over 1 million small businesses started annually, statistically 40% will be out of business by the end of the first year, and over 5 years 80% will be out of business.  That seems almost alarming to me and truthfully these statistics could possible keep me from pursing the dream of self-employment.

Small business have four basic ideas which to keep in the back of their minds and strategic planning.  The first idea is that of the E-Myth, that small businesses are started by entrepreneurs risking capital to make a profit.  The second is the Turnkey Revolution that not only changes the way business is conducted globally, but who goes into business, how they do it, and their likelihood for survival.  Thirdly, is that the Business Development Process is deemed to be essential to the success of a small business.  Lastly, is that the fourth idea is that the Business Development Process and Turnkey Revolution should be systematically applied in a step by step method.  These processes become predictable to produce results if given the proper time and attention.

        Your business is a distinct reflection of who you are.  If your business is to change, and it must in order to continually thrive, you must change first.  Entrepreneurial dreams of grand scale last only for a moment, and then reality sets in that you realize a moment later, the feeling was gone.  Many have nice romantic dreams of entrepreneurship, but in the end, the costs lie in the belief that many businesses were, in fact started by entrepreneurs when it was the technician who has actually begun the business.  Many small business owners experience Entrepreneurial seizure that is spurred by an instinctual feeling or set of circumstances that push one to move forward in their life on their own.  However, many owners make a fatal assumption that if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a technical business that actually conducts that technical work.  This is the root cause of most small business failures.  The technician suffering from entrepreneurial seizure takes the work they love to do and turns it into a job.  All entrepreneurs feel exhilaration, terror, exhaustion and despair.

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Inside the owner are three people; the entrepreneur, the manager and the technician.  I found it to be amusing; however true, the analogy of the fat and skinny guy, one of the many sides of your personality should not attempt to make choices for the other.  However if a person could find the comfortable mix, it could bring a harmonious balance to the surface.  It is important to understand each of the facets of the owner; the Entrepreneur who continually dreams for the vision of the company, the Manager who manages the system and operations for the survival and success ...

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