Hey Square Readers,
We hope you had a great time reading The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber with us. We had some really great discussion threads, and a wonderful live video chat discussion! Thank you all for participating and making the Square Readers Book Club a welcoming and helpful place.
So we’re here now to bring it all together with a full book and discussion summary, with the parts that you all found to be the most important. And if you didn’t get a chance to read the book, here’s a chance to get the shortened version. Let’s dive in!
There’s also a podcast episode by the author called ‘Beyond The E-Myth’ Framework Explained with Michael E. Gerber, that goes into a lot of the high level concepts of the book.
Book Summary
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber is all about deconstructing the idea that starting a business leads to nothing but freedom, happiness, and profit. It counters the conception that anyone who is good at doing something will be good at running a business. He breaks down what it actually takes to run a successful business, along with strategies to set yourself up from success with systems and processes to help you make more time for big picture planning and profitable decisions.
Discussion Summary
We used our Book Club discussion threads to take the theories from the book and see how you all put them into practice in your businesses.
We kicked things off with a baseline conversation before reading the book about whether or not being an Entrepreneur is what you imagined.
Next we laid the foundations of the book by recapping the author’s 3 Roles and 3 Phases of business. The three roles are Technician, Manager, and Entrepreneur, and you can be all 3, or split them up among separate people in your business, but the author stresses that you need to set time to perform all functions or else the business won’t grow successfully.
Then we dove into the core principle of the book, what the author calls the Turn-Key Business Model. This takes lessons learned from franchise businesses and suggests implementing them for your own. The core message is that creating easily replicable systems and processes can make sure that every customer gets an incredible experience every single time. It also can help take work off of your plate so you can focus on high value things.
After that, we moved on to some of the practical steps you can take to build the Prototype of your business: Innovation, Quantification, and Orchestration. This is the process of experimenting to discover what appeals the most to your customers, and then implementing the findings as standard practices and systems.
Then we put everything all together into the Business Development Program. This acts as a roadmap to work through and create a business model according to the principles of the book.
And finally we finished off our discussion threads by talking about the impact that implementing strategies from the book has had on your businesses, with folks sharing the benefits they’ve felt.
Live Discussion
We held our Live Discussion on Tuesday June 25th. It was a really great discussion, and thanks to everyone who joined us! We kicked off with general thoughts about the book, with sellers sharing what resonated and what didn’t.
Watch the video recording:
Most of our attendees were sole operators so the idea of growing a business, hiring employees, and treating it like a franchise didn’t really resonate at first. But once we started to dive into ideas around implementing systems, as well as other great takeaways, it seemed much more helpful.
We talked about the author’s example of a boutique hotel treating every customer like a VIP, creating unbelievable and memorable experiences every time. All of us really connected to that example, and wanted to find ways of thrilling customers in the same way, and knowing that you can implement systems to achieve that was really inspiring. We talked about some ideas of how to create those experiences for our customers in our unique businesses.
We discussed how systems can be implemented in any business, no matter what you sell or produce, and that they can help give time back to focus on other things, achieve the list of to-dos that slip through the cracks, maintain a high level of standards, and more.
We also got into some creative ways to automate and hire out some of the tasks you don’t want to do, so you can focus on the ones you do and bring the most value to the business.
Overall, it was a wonderful call, and we hope to see even more folks in the next one!
Next Book
We’re starting our next book, The Mountain is You by Brianna Wiest, on Monday July 1st. We hope you read along and see you in our discussion threads!
Your Thoughts
I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on this book and overall the experience of our Square Readers Book Club!
- Was this book’s system helpful? What did you get out of it?
- What are you looking forward to with the next book?
It’s never too late to jump into any of our discussion threads and join in on the conversation!
Paying it Forward
If you’re all done with the book and are looking for something to do with a copy you bought, I highly recommend paying it forward. Give it to another local business owner, or donate it to a local used bookstore, community center, library, Little Free Library, or anywhere else, so someone else can benefit from it.
Thank you so much for all of your participation and discussion throughout the last two months! A big shoutout to some of our most active members: @CareyJo, @DinaLRosenberg, @Bronze_Palms, @Smellthis1919, @TheRealChipA, @CathyDisbrow, @HC_Charlie, @TCSlaguna, @mksavage, @Doran, @Barbershop806, @BrianaJo, @DMac14, @martinlumsden, @Rachel-MNG, @LindaD1, @Stacelyn24, @doc_choc, @Michael_L, @MudFire_Dex, @Lovewell, @bonny, @Corgi-Mom, @AgiM, @Marigolds33, @TimP2, @moldremovalinba, @HearsayCorp.
We hope you read the next book with us, The Mountain is You by Brianna Wiest!
Can’t wait to read more with you,
Pesso
