Founder and Creator of E-MYTH, Michael E. Gerber, Turns 85
Few authors have experienced the success Michael E. Gerber has enjoyed or created for his readers.
Michael E. Gerber’s E-Myth books on small business and entrepreneurship have sold copies in the millions.
His unique mindset about entrepreneurship and small business ownership has literally created an entire industry of small business consulting services since the founding of his first business development firm, The Michael Thomas Corporation, in 1977.
And this Sunday, June 20, Michael E. Gerber turns 85.
What is it that Michael E. Gerber knows that most business consultants fail to grasp?
It’s this. One single reality causes the failure of almost every startup in the world today. Consultants or “experts” who don’t understand that reality shortchange their clients, sometimes long before those businesses even get started.
This realization is what Michael E. Gerber identified in the consciousness-shifting revelation of his first E-Myth book.
The lesson: The vast majority of small business owners aren’t the entrepreneurs they (and their consultants) believe themselves to be. Instead, in Michael E. Gerber’s words, they are actually “technicians, suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure!”
In short, most small business owners start their businesses as jobs for themselves, rather than as entrepreneurial enterprises.
In his classic example, a woman who bakes great apple pies might think she has the skills to run a bakery. In fact, being good at a specific skill (e.g., baking pies, writing software, designing children’s clothing) doesn’t mean that the person is automatically qualified to run a business.
So people who have skills (“technicians,” in E-Myth language) aren’t necessarily entrepreneurs. They’re just folks who are trying to create a job around the thing they love to do.
The difference between the two realities (creating a job versus building a true entrepreneurial venture) has been at the heart of Michael E. Gerber’s E-Myth fame and fortune over the past three decades.
The failure to understand this distinction has led to the giving…and accepting…of poor business advice by practically everyone else who purports to guide small businesses.
For more than forty years, Michael E. Gerber has focused on this question: How do you turn small business “technicians” into entrepreneurs or creators, and, in the process, turn their small job cleverly disguised as a business into an enterprise worthy of great growth?
Working ON©
The transformation of Michael E. Gerber’s work on the economy of small business has been meteoric. How influential has Michael E. Gerber been? Consider:
· He has written no fewer than 37 entrepreneurship, leadership, and management books, which have been translated into more than 30 languages!
· His E-Myth concept is known and practiced in over 150 countries.
· Inc. Magazine coined him the World’s #1 Small Business Guru.
· The Wall Street Journal chose his E-Myth Revisited book as one of the five most essential business books to read of all time.
For decades, Michael E. Gerber’s companies have acted as thought leaders, guiding millions of small companies on the path to growth, influencing an economic revolution of immense proportions. In the process, Michael E. Gerber has shown millions of individuals and teams how to create, start, build, launch and grow a successful enterprise. By doing this, he has given these entrepreneurs the opportunity to replicate and even franchise their businesses around the things they love to do the most.
As a result, Michael has created billions of dollars of wealth for business owners and for communities and countries all over the world.
Those who know Michael well report that as he approaches his 85th birthday, Michael retains the energy of a 20-something. His goal now is to build a foundation for entrepreneurship that will serve the needs of young people across the planet.
Technology has created news ways to connect with customers and market a business. And yet, the basic problem of how to turn a skill, an education, or even a sense of mission into an operating business remains as challenging as ever. The E-Myth message remains as vital today as when Michael published his first book on the subject in 1986.
Today, individuals can align with Michael in several ways. They can become CoAuthors in The E-Myth vertical series, which has published 19+ books, including The E-Myth Veterinarian, The E-Myth Real Estate Agent, The E-Myth HVAC, The E-Myth Attorney, The E-Myth Dentist, or even The E-Myth Chief Financial Officer.
They can become Origination: Dreaming Room Facilitators, who conduct life-changing incubator events for new and experienced entrepreneurs around the world.
They can join one of the greatest acquisitions of all time and become an investor working to create a Cluster of E-Myth Successful Companies to acquire all GerberWorks(R) assets and IP, including E-Myth Worldwide. And they can take part in a million-dollar fundraiser for three Global Charitable Foundations — BNI, Unstoppable, and Advocates of Love — on July 25th, 2021.
Michael E. Gerber remains a potent force in the world of entrepreneurship and business consulting. Turning 85? Nothing can slow him down.
