The past 2-3 years of managing a start-up (consulting) company have been, in the greater part, challenging, humbling and unique learning experience. One of my mentors was right in saying that starting a company would be one of the most difficult things one could do, especially just coming-off from a corporate environment. From working and gaining experience from different (design/planning) firms to 'creating something' is a tremendous shift. Books, mentors and trainings really help in sustaining that 'shift'.
One of the books that has helped a lot is Michael Gerber's E-Myth (Revisited). I'd like to share the important lessons I gained from this book.
1. The person that goes into business is actually three-people-in-one: The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and the Technician
The Entrepreneur is the visionary in us, the dreamer. The Manager in us is the one that craves control and order, the one that always sees the practical side of things. The Technician is the doer, the engineer, the architect, the lawyer in us, depending on professional expertise. According to Gerber, if the Entrepreneur lives in the future, the Manager lives in the past, the Technician lives in the present. Here's how he pictures it:
The Entrepreneur wakes up with a Vision. The Manager screams, Uh Oh! While the two battle it out, the Technician just goes to work and minds his own business, does what he's very good at, the technical side, forgetting about the actual Business. Gerber adds that if they were equally balanced, what he'd be describing would be 'an incredibly competent individual'- The Entrepreneur free to forge ahead with the Vision and areas of interest; The Manager would be solidifying the base of operations; and the Technician would be doing the technical work. Unfortunately, based on his experience, the typical start-up business owner is only 10 percent Entrepreneur, 20 percent Manager and 70 percent Technician.
The question is how to achieve balance and do things differently, and give the 'true entrepreneur' in oneself life to totally change one's experience in a business?
2. The Technical work of a business and the Business that does that technical work are two (2) totally different things.
The fatal assumption of most start-up entrepreneurs is: If you understand the technical work, you understand a business that does that technical work. Wrong! Gerber goes on to cite that the "Technician suffering from an Entrepreneurial Seizure, a business is not a business but a place to go to work." E.g. The carpenter, or the electrician, or the plumber becomes a contractor; the barber opens up a barber shop; the architect opens an office, etc. According to Gerber, the real tragedy is that when the Technician falls prey to the Fatal Assumption, the business that was supposed to free him from the limitations of working for somebody else, actually NOW enslaves him". Which is worse. Because "suddenly the job he know how to do so well becomes one job he know how to do PLUS a dozen others he doesn't know how to do at all"- accounting, marketing, business development, etc.
How does one really 'mind' one's own business?
3. There are three (3) phases of a business' growth: Infancy or the Technician's Phase; Adolescence or Getting Some Help Phase, and the Maturity, the Entrepreneurial Perspective.
In the Infancy Phase, the owner and the business are one and the same thing. According to Gerber, "there's nothing wrong with being a Technician. There's only something wrong with being a Technician who also owns a business! Because as a Technician-turned-business-owner, your focus is upside down. You see the world from the bottom up rather than from the top down. You have a tactical view rather than a strategic view. You believe that a business is nothing more than an aggregate of the various types of work done in it, when in fact it is much more than that". Gerber adds that "if your business depends on you, you don't own a business- you have a job. And its the worst job in the world because you're working for a lunatic- You!. The purpose of going into business is to get free of a job so you can create jobs for other people".
Adolescence Phase begins at the point in the life of a business when one decides to get some help, and in the case of small business owners, the first employee is usually the accountant or the book keeper. Sounds familiar. However, Gerber adds that it is important to maintain a Management by Delegation, instead of Management by Abdication, which means, as a business owner, you simply must know all the ins and out of your business and do not just simply abdicate the responsibility to someone else.
After these stages, there are three ways the business can turn- Getting Small Again, Going Broke or Adolescent Survival.
The real question here is how do you go into the third phase of a company's growth- Maturity.
According to Gerber, a Mature business knows how it got to be where it is, and what it must do to get where it wants to go. "The person who launches his business as a Mature company must also go through Infancy and Adolescence, but he simply goes thru them in an entirely different way. It's his perspective that makes the difference. His Entrepreneurial Perspective."- Gerber
The lessons above are just half of the book, and it gets really more interesting. I'd like to share the rest in another blog entry. Meanwhile, on with the journey and real-life application of lessons and ideas.
We choose Adolescent Survival. The journey to Maturity is long, along with the development of the proper 'perspective', or Mindset that goes with it.
Aja!
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