Leave Home While You Know Everything

I just love bushy-tailed know-it-all’s - young entreprenerps who’ve obviously never read Michael Gerber’s “E-Myth.” Go forth young technician and conquer the world. Surely your exceptional skills as salesman/broker/engineer/coder/designer/whatever, will propel you to great heights once you catapult over your air-conditioned cubicle.

Ok, so I'm "The Grinch that Stole Entrepreneurial Christmas” - get used to it, it’s just my style. Truth be told I've heard too many sob stories from brokenhearted, pipe-beaten, biz bunglers, who’ve come crawling to us for help with hopes that we’ll fix their broken deals.

Assuming you haven’t read the E-Myth, the book’s premise is this:

1. “A Technician is not an Entrepreneur.” He is a worker bee that’s become proficient in a particular task or trade. A Technician does not think outside the box, but is spoon fed within it. He dreams of excellence and liberation from 9-5 ham and eggerdom, where one day he’ll be a shot caller. Unfortunately, the hard lessons ahead include not knowing what shots to call, and not realizing that if you’re calling them, there’s no Technician in your place to carry them out. I call this the “how did I get here” and “what do I do now” conundrum.

2. “Systems run the business and people run the systems.” Any modern business which relies exclusively upon experts to survive is not a business, but one or more Technicians playing business–more like a law practice. This model is doomed from the start, and will most likely result in one of two scenarios: a) Having your experts run off and compete against you (regardless of their illusion, it’s still a pain, and you lost your greatest investment in human capital), or; b) They stick around and bleed you for ransom, knowing full well that you won’t replace them or don’t believe you could. The latter leads to an eventual leverage point toward ownership stake, resentment, or both. Either way, you lose.

3. “Entrepreneurs don’t abdicate, they delegate.” You can’t replicate something that works (whether you stumbled upon it or planned it) by dumping the process on someone and hoping it continues. You must take time to fuse your entrepreneurial essences with another, becoming one before separating again. Whomever you delegate to must “see the light” (at least the light of that particular tunnel you’re leading them down). You can later decide where they exit, or whether that light at the end of their tunnel is a freight train. Either way, make it your choice, not theirs. Moreover, serial delegation inspires consistent replication, and replication is the cornerstone of growth. The net of this Saturday night satire is lesser the effect of boredom than the forewarning of misplaced stardom. Take it as you like, whoever “you” are, and thank Michael Gerber for writing a book about it.