In this first new and totally revised edition of the 150,000-copy underground bestseller, The E-Myth, Michael Gerber dispels the myths surrounding starting your own business and shows how commonplace assumptions can get in the way of running a business. He walks you through the steps in the life of a business from entrepreneurial infancy, through adolescent growing pains, to the mature entrepreneurial perspective, the guiding light of all businesses that succeed. He then shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business—whether or not it is a franchise. Finally, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in. your business. After you have read The E-Myth Revisited, you will truly be able to grow your business in a predictable and productive way.

Gerber contends that most small business owners run into difficulty because they think and work like technicians. They try to do the work of the business, rather than learning how to run the business. Gerber writes, "If your business depends on you, you don't own a business-you have a job." "What if you don't want to be there?" The work grinds small business owners down, and they become disillusioned with their businesses.

This is probably true for many, new small business people. Many people aren't cut out to operate a business. Running a business is hard work. But, rather than acknowledge that reality, the goal, according to Gerber, is to create a business which doesn't need you, to create a "systems dependent business" and not a "people dependent business."

Gerber uses McDonald's as his prototypical model of operation. Gerber says McDonald's is an example of a turn-key business. You just put the key in the lock and the business works. A prototype franchise that can be easily replicated is Gerber's holy grail of business.

Gerber writes: "Given the failure rate of most small businesses, he [Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's] must have realized a crucial fact: for McDonald's to be a predictable success, the business would have to work, because the franchisee, if left to his own devices, most assuredly wouldn't!...Once he understood this, Ray Kroc's problem became his opportunity... Forced to create a business that worked in order to sell it, he also created a business that would work once it was sold, no matter who bought it... a foolproof, predictable business.... A systems-dependent business, not a people-dependent business."

I disagree with this analysis. Difficulty of management is a fundamental problem with any delocalized business, one with many locations spread throughout a large area. A dedicated manager is needed on each site. One manager can't oversee all the business locations. The franchise concept is one way to place devoted managers at each location. Each franchisee is not only carefully selected (in a good franchise) and carefully trained, but each franchisee has paid money to own the franchise. So, each manager becomes an owner. And, owners care more about the success of their business than anyone else. They are willing to work harder than anyone else to see the business succeed. Their own money is at stake.

Ask owners of successful franchises if they sit around *not* working. If an employee doesn't show up, who fills in? In fact, many franchise owners will tell you that buying a franchise is very much like buying a job! The fundamental premise that a McDonald's franchise can function with just anyone *not* working at the helm, while the operation just sort of self-manages, is incorrect.

It's true the best franchises don't tend to fail, but they aren't sold to just anybody either! I'm not criticizing the franchise concept. My goal is just to show that few businesses are purely "systems dependent."

Gerber suggests you try to create a template business operation that works of its own accord so that it can be replicated in a cookie cutter approach. Easier said than done!

Where do you get the basis for this template, or as Gerber calls it, "Franchise prototype" ? Gerber says the "franchise prototype" is part of your entrepreneurial vision. You dream about what your business will look like in the future. In practice, most successful franchises are based upon many years of operating history and industry experience. And, many knowledgeable business owners, who fully understand the franchise concept, have failed dismally when trying to franchise operations.

Of course, McDonald's and other established franchises have spent billions of dollars to create brand awareness for the franchise, which brings in a steady flow of customers. Your new "business format franchise" (way of doing business) won't have brand awareness. You will need to build it. Building brand awareness is marketing, and no marketing plan is ever assured to work. There won't be a cookie cutter marketing plan to toss in with the cookie-cutter operation.

"The E-Myth Revisited" is also a bit dated. Gerber writes, "A soggy French fry is not a McDonald's French fry." That has not been my recent experience. So much for flawless systems!

I did catch a glimpse of the last pages where Gerber offers a free "Turn-Key AnalysisTM" of your business. He writes, "Conducted over the phone in no more than an hour, our Turn-Key AnalysisTM will determine exactly what needs to be done in your business to give you everything you want from it: what essential building blocks are missing and need to be added; what processes and systems are absent or, if present, are inadequate to achieve the results you want to produce."

That's a pretty impressive offer! In under an hour, over the phone, he'll tell you exactly what's wrong with your business! I think I'll pass on that. But, do consider contacting SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives), your local small business development center, or business graduate school. Each of these might be able to provide small business counseling. Be sure to specify that you want a complete turn-key operation with no work and no management. Showing up for business optional.

Yet, some business owners claim that this book has helped them. I think they might be confusing good old organization and routine for a "systems dependent business."

Peter Hupalo, author of "Thinking Like An Entrepreneur."


Stop Running Around in Circles   November 3, 2004
 297 out of 311 found this review helpful

This book is a guide to success for small business owners. Gerber is the founder of a consulting company for small businesses. In the beginning of the book, Gerber cites the well-known failure-rate statistics for small business: 40% fail in 1 year. Of those who survive 1year, 80% fail in 5 years, and of those who survive 5 years, another 80% fail. Over the years, Gerber has observed that the small business owners who fail often share a number of characteristics, while those who succeed do so not by luck, brains, or perseverance, but by taking a different approach. This book explains the approach that is necessary for a business to survive and thrive.

One of Gerber's most striking observations is that most small businesses are started by "technicians", that is people who are skilled at something and who enjoy doing that thing. (A technician can be anything from a computer programmer to plumber to a dog groomer to a musician or lawyer.) When these technicians strike out on their own, they tend to continue doing the work they are skilled at, and ignore the overarching aspects of business. Without clear goals and quantification benchmarks, they soon find themselves overworked, understaffed, and eventually broke. Worst of all, they may come to hate the work they do. Rather than owning a business, they own a job, and they find themselves working for managers who are completely clueless about how to run a business- -themselves.

The solution, Gerber argues, is for every business owner, especially the technician-owners, to balance their business personalities. According to Gerber, every business owner needs to simultaneously be an entrepreneur and a manager as well as a technician. The technician is the worker-bee, the one who produces the product. The manager makes sure operations and finances run smoothly and consistently. The entrepreneur formulates the goals, and steers the business in the direction needed to reach those goals. Of these three personalities, the entrepreneur is key- -without it, the technician will work himself or herself to death or bankruptcy. As the business grows, the business owner will need to draw away from the technician work and manager work and delegate this work, rather than abdicate this, to others.

For turning businesses around, or getting them off the right foot, Gerber suggests looking at franchises as a model. In comparison to the dismal rate of ordinary small-business start-ups, 75% of franchises succeed at 5 years. The reason they succeed is that they are set up so that any unskilled person off the street could walk in, buy a franchise, run all operations in the franchise, and have a fairly good chance of success. The product of franchise companies is a business model, not food, hotel rooms, etc. In order to meet this level of success, franchise companies have clear operations manuals, procedures, consistent sales approaches- -every detail of running the business is specified down to dress codes and wall paper.

By asking us to consider the franchise approach, Gerber is not saying to go out and buy a franchise license. Instead, he says to imagine that you want to sell your business as a successful franchise within a finite period of time. If so, what will you need to do regarding your business plan and management in order to meet this goal? That is, if you were going to make your business fool-proof so that any unskilled person could take over as owner after a few years and succeed with it, what will you need to do?

Overall, I found the ideas in this book extremely profound and incredibly useful for my own small-business venture. The writing style can be a bit wordy and choppy at times, which is the only reason why I did not give this book full marks. If you're a small business owner whose business is out of control, stagnant, or worse, or if you're thinking of going into business yourself, this book can be of immeasurable value.



Business Advice From a Self Proclaimed American Guru, a Yaqui Indian Shaman, and an Obscure Armenian Mystic   April 18, 2006
 136 out of 155 found this review helpful


Given the hubris with which Michael Gerber unpacks his pearls of wisdom throughout this book, it is perhaps not surprising that he would refer to himself on the cover as "The World's #1 Small Business Guru". More surprising is the homage he pays to Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui medicine man (probably fictitious), and G.I. Gurdjieff, author of Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, and originator of the esoteric path of knowledge known as the Fourth Way.

What's this New Age mumbo jumbo doing in a business book? Your guess is as good as mine.

Gerber's thesis stripped of all this fluff is quite simple and unremarkable. He notes that most small business owners who see themselves as entrepreneurs are actually technicians; skilled workers in the production of whatever their business's product happens to be. Generally they lack management capability as well as true entrepreneurship - the envisioning of a primary aim and strategic objective and the development of a systems approach that will consistently produce the desired results. Gerber exhorts small business owners to see the big picture, take on the true entrepreneurial role, and in so doing, to work on, rather than in, their businesses.

While this is good common sense advice, the assertion that any business can (or should) be reduced to a McDonald's like franchise prototype oversimplifies and distorts reality. The promise of powerful results that will automatically be achieved upon donning just the right color of a suit and tie and delivering a canned sales script is alluring but also dangerous. Things in the real world of business are not nearly as simple and mechanistic as Gerber would have us believe.

I found the dialogue that runs throughout the book between the author and Sarah, the struggling proprietor of All About Pies, (a bakery), to be exceedingly annoying. In it, Gerber presents as a powerful and all knowing Svengali, weaving a hypnotic spell as he counsels his disciple in matters of the life and death of her business. Sarah is utterly compliant, totally receptive, and seems almost to be ravished by Gerber's surpassing prowess and wisdom. The smarmy tone of this is evident in quotations such as the following:

"I could see that Sarah got it.

I could see that the flush on her cheeks now had nothing to do with the work she'd been doing all day.

I could see that her dark, intelligent, creative eyes were riveted on mine, and that the questions were bubbling within her...".

Flush on her cheeks? Eyes...riveted on mine?

Come on - gimme a break!



Well worth reading and pondering   May 26, 2000
 82 out of 112 found this review helpful

I would have to rate this is the most influential small business book I have ever read. I've been in some kind of business since I was 11 years old and probably further back than that, but I don't really remember all that. I've never held a full-time job in my life. I had one job, and it was part-time. I say that because I hope to present my review from the perspective of the "business battlefield."

I first read this book in 1994. I believe it was first published in 1986. The first time I picked it up, I stayed up all night and read it all the way through. I just couldn't put it down. With that said, I need to point out that if you don't own a business, never have owned a business or never will, this book probably won't appeal to you. It will appeal to you if you already own a small business or are planning on opening a business. It may just save your sanity. It's saved mine.

Basically, the point of the book is this: "Your business is not your life" (quote from the book). It took me about 4 readings of this book to figure that out. Business owners tend to think working 16 hours a day is some kind of heroic effort. It's suicide. Been there done that. There's nothing glamorous about working in your business until you fall over. How, then, does the author propose to solve this problem? How many small business owners don't work insane hours and are successful? The key according to the author is to make your business into a system like McDonald's that anyone can run. Too much of a business is dependent on the owner to be there. You're not there, the business doesn't make any money. If you're not there for an extended period of time, you won't have a business when you come back.

The key factor in turning a business into a system as the author states, is to have operating manuals which describe each function of the business. One criticism I have of the book, and I suppose he did this on purpose, is that he really doesn't go into a lot of detail as to how these manuals are done. I guess we have to figure that out. The example in the book about the owner of a pie shop, I felt, was a very good example. I know, because I wrote operating manuals for my business, and I started franchising my business back in 1995. I had 15 offices up and running at one point, and I decided not to pursue it any further, so I pared it all back down. This book works, but you better be prepared to take a really long hard look at how your business is run and particulary how it fits into your life.

The bottom line on this book is that you can make your business into a system. You can reduce your hours to a reasonable level. Yes, you can even make a good living in your own business. I've been doing it for years. The only problem is, you have to do it. You have to sit down, take a good hard look at your business, and get the thing built or rebuilt from the ground up. You need to have all your financial records in order. You need to know at any moment what your operating margins are, what's going on with everything. It's a big task, and I suspect many people who have read this book don't want to do all that. As for my business, I've implemented much of what he talks about with great success. I haven't implemented all of it because some of it is difficult and time consuming. The other problem is, there's no "step-by-step" method presented, at least not what one would want. There is a methodology to it, but as with most things in life, we have to adapt them to our situation and take the time to do it. The author won't take you by the hand and do it for you.

I'm giving this book 5 stars because I think it provides much thought provoking material. If you own a business or are planning on going into business, this book is a must. Even if you ignore most of what he says, it will at least change the way you think about your business. For example, take the total number of hours you work in your business per week, month, year or whatever and divide that by your net business income factoring in expenses that were just for tax purposes. After you do that, find out your hourly wage. I did that, and I was shocked. If you're working 12-16 hours a day, and you're making an average income in your business or if you're breaking even, you're wasting your time. Take a day off and read this book. It will change your focus dramatically. It's not an easy process, but if you're serious about making your business work without you having to work so hard, then this book is worth every penny. Good luck in all your ventures.


Guide to creating a business that lets you 'breathe easy."   August 13, 2000
 71 out of 112 found this review helpful

If you own a small business or are considering starting one, put this book at the top of your "must read list." As a personal coach, I recommend the E-Myth Revisited to our entrepreneurial clients, especially if the business has "taken over the client's life."

Gerber's E-Myth Revisited offers salient points with the most important being, "Work ON your business not IN it." We are introduced to three working personalities: 1) the entrepreneur who always has ideas, 2) the manager who keeps everything organized, and 3) the technician who knows that "If it's going to get done right, I'd better do it myself." Through the eyes of a business owner/client, Gerber unfolds the story that allows us to see the importance of each personality preference and the necessity for balance between them. We also see the different stages of business growth and come to appreciate the benefits of implementing systems at the beginning of developing a business.

Humor throughout the book makes this an enjoyable read, and as I tell my clients, savor your chuckles when you find Gerber describing you almost perfectly.