The E Myth Revisited
Talking to all our fellow entrepreneurs out there! This Market Mamas Must Read Recommendation title is The E-Myth Revisited, Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber.
Kendra very first listened to this book with Grace when they were working through the nights baking in the shop together about 10 years ago. Shout out to Grace, our 1st entrepreneur mama interview, who has since launched 2 new businesses! (https://www.market-mamas.com/guest-interviews/entrepreneur-grace) Then, when Kendra had a dinner date last summer with our business mama Dezi who we also interviewed (https://www.market-mamas.com/guest-interviews/entrepreneur-dezi), she brought the book up to Kendra again! So, it was clear that it would be a great opportunity to go back through this book with even more years and life experience and with Becky! The mamas dove right in and it really helped get them on the right track to build Market Mamas from the ground up and give them a strong start!
We found all sorts of pearls of wisdom within the stories and lessons author Michael Gerber told. The “E” in the book's title stands for Entrepreneurial. And the core of the book is all about the distinction between working on your business and working in your business. He offers stories and examples of struggles businesses encounter, possible explanations for their trouble, and then elaborates on ways to improve and optimize. By dispelling common myths and outlining essential steps and growth phases of any business, Gerber can really help early or struggling business owners course correct for success! Born in 1936, Michael Gerber has been working in this industry for several decades now and was named World’s #1 Small Business Guru in 2010. So, for all our fellow entrepreneurs out there, let's talk about some of our most powerful takeaways from this book and how we are utilizing them with our Market Mamas company and our trading even.
“How do you build a business that works effortlessly and predictably so that you can build the life you love? How do you get free of your business to live a fuller life? Your business cannot control you. You control it.”
Check out our full discussion in the podcast below, including more of our favorite quotes and how we’ve adapted the advice into our own trading journeys and lives.
We loved that a major example that Gerber uses in this book is a woman who opens her own pie shop “ALL ABOUT PIES” because she is AMAZING at making pies and everyone told her you have to open a pie shop. I mean, that’s seemingly a solid plan, like the good ole saying “find something you love and you'll never work a day in your life.” But, that’s just not true. Work is work! So fast forward to when she is seeking help from Gerber, her life has become unrecognizable and she’s completely drowning, working endlessly from sun up till sun down trying to operate and manage every part of her business on her own and it’s no surprise she actually starts to HATE pies! So this sheds light on the very common misconception or myth that being good at something can easily be turned into a profitable business. So many small business owners make the mistake of taking their skills into their business only to realize they’re not owning a business but really owning a job, with all the added responsibility of the business. There’s a great American love for the mom and pop shop that has been open for ages and delivered the same services by the same faces and the regulars that frequent the establishment love that sense of nostalgia. However, to the point of this book that model of doing business will inevitably turn your life’s purpose into serving your business and never fully allow your business to serve your life.
New businesses and early trading careers are so full of failure. Not in a bad way, but in a new way! You don’t know what you don’t know. And every roadblock has to be studied and figured out the best way to grow beyond it or pivot around it. The early months to years are hard. But, to the point of this book, if you purposefully set them up right from the start, your business can become fairly automated and you can really enjoy passive income streams once it is all established! Goals, right?!?!
I think with any business or career, parts of it we will (or should) LOVE and other parts are requirements for it to function properly. Both are necessary. We were so inspired in this book how he framed it with emphasis on our ability to structure our business in a way that the required pieces that our hearts aren’t in as much should, ideally, be off-loaded from our plates and either automated or given to an employee with a skillset in that area. So that our business serves us and we can pour into the art and core of it ourselves. "How can I run my business doing the work I Love to do rather than the work I Have to do?" is a quote from this book and it really hit home for us. With Market Mamas, right now Kendra and Becky are it. Every piece of this podcasting world we research and put together ourselves. It works because we both love her so much and have varied skill sets with the tasks. From inception to the current day, we’ve found and established a rhythm with the work so that we can each pour into our loves and split the other work that is required. We also have tremendous mutual respect for each other, and that is key for this work. We are so grateful for the work the other is doing and show up for our parts to make it balanced and get it done! The goal though is to, maybe 2025, start being able to afford assistance with some of the task-y parts so we can really prioritize our content, being of the highest service to those around us, and showing up for the community in the most impactful ways!
Always important to clearly identify your business aim! Speaking of AIM, that’s one of the 1st Steps that the E-Myth outlines! Business owners must ask themselves: What is your primary aim? Becky and Kendra did their homework early on when they were still conceptualizing a business plan and we’ll share what they came up with as the primary aim for Market Mamas: “We provide support and services to help traders of the stock market. We offer video, audio, and written content that specializes in the area of performance psychology. We also provide consultation and development of tools and resources to help and serve.” So far, we Market Mamas are coming right along toward this aim!
The other really important steps include Strategic objective, Management strategy, People strategy, Marketing strategy, & Systems strategy. The book breaks each of these down in the chapters, and you’ll find great value in reading up on the form and function of each strategy. It’s almost like the anatomy and physiology of running a business. Essentially, all of these are jobs, tasks, and roles that have to be filled in order for a business to be successful. Most of which are behind the scenes, not super exciting, and busy work. Neglecting any of these areas will be detrimental to the health of your business and can eventually affect your personal psychological and physical health as well.
Another great concept covered in this book is the question “What do you actually sell?” There’s always a commodity and then there’s a product, and those are two completely separate entities. The example here is say a business like Revlon, their cosmetics, a lipstick, is the commodity. It’s what you can walk away with. Now what is the difference between that and the product? So the product is how a customer feels, for Revlon, it’s HOPE! A hope to be more attractive, enjoy a new shade, make a statement… So, the product serves as the source of “the experience of doing business with you." Which leads us to a big AH-HA - “The truth is, no one is really interested in the commodity, people buy feelings… How our company anticipates those feelings and fulfills them is the product.” This is the true goal with Market Mamas - what we offer to you all! The WORK of our business is editing, marketing, researching, content creation, product development, cross posting, networking, scheduling, admin, and early finances. But the HEART of her is what we offer in our conversations. How we want to always show up for you all by openly sharing our real-time experiences in these episodes to ideally serve other traders and provide a space to grow along with us! That is our commodity.
This book did a nice job of covering core business models and requirements to make them successful and optimize a business’s functionality. That with the right prioritization and putting the right people in the right positions, your business can serve your life, not make you a servant to the work. Work to live, not live to work kind of energy.
We love this quote from Gerber: "Business, even a small business such as yours, is both an art and a science. And you need a process, a practice, a method and a system that works. " This is so true, with trading and creating a business. The art is the creative, unique, individuality piece that, as with Market Mamas, makes us who we are and a nice variation to other options out there. Kendra and I really saw a need to have more podcasts or general content around the active, right now experience of being a messy middle trader. There’s a niche there that has incredible value to be talking through with you all in real time as we are growing through it! That is our art! But the science is the nuts and bolts of it. Learning software, posting schedules, platform algos, marketing, website design… The list is real long, let me tell you!
With trading, the nuts and bolts in terms of platform functionality, methods of technical analysis, and funding & account options - that you can learn fairly quickly and then just operate almost second nature with. The art is the bulk of the work there. Learning, back testing, studying and fine tuning your ability to read Miss Market and how to execute and capitalize on optimal probability outcomes. That is never ending and you have to love the art, style, and feel of it to have any kind of longevity or major success as a trader. And likely with any business. Loving the art of it, we believe and was also a key point in this book, is critical to fostering a business to its full thriving potential.
Statistics show that up to 80% of new business start ups will fail. There is a lot of work to truly make it sustainable. So, with both our trading and our Market Mamas podcast company, we are growing those businesses with the knowledge from this book and other research we have done, from a place of dedication to the hard work of it and eyes wide open to the required obstacles that we will have to overcome repeatedly in different ways on different days. We’ve mentioned in a previous episode that we very much believe in the 10% talent 90% dedication rule.
One final key point from this book is a really important question for all of us to consider before and during operating our businesses. Are you a technician, a manager, or an entrepreneur? You will need to have a mix of all 3 to be a successful business owner. The Entrepreneur is the visionary that exists in each of us. The Manager is the planner. The Technician is the doer. You will find that these 3 personalities are often in battle with each other, so it’s critical we find a way to give them equal attention and space to thrive. This is the core of the education this book provides through a guiding narrative and stories to give all early business owners a realistic understanding of what will be asked of them. And how it can be cultivated to build your life and grant access to all your larger goals!
For anyone else out there who is considering or dabbling in really going for something bold and different, such as trading or starting that business you’ve been dreaming of - GO FOR IT! Last quote from this book is: "Great people create their lives actively while everyone else is waiting passively to see where their life takes them. Difference is living fully and intentionally or just existing." Entrepreneurship is not for everyone, and that is ok. But if this speaks to you, this book will help. There are resources all around you, and we are capable of everything! Often the limits we allow to keep us in our current lives are self imposed. It is so much easier to passively go through the motions. But, let us tell you, even on our red, hard, upsetting days where we fall short of our goals, cry to our people, and yearn for the consistent perfect days to be every day, even on those lesson days, we still love it. Because evolving through the challenges is a brighter and more exciting life and we know the potential is limitless! This is living fully during our limited time on this planet instead of just existing and it is right for us.
You guys definitely want to get this book if you are on a similar journey as Kendra and Becky! It’s good and written by an expert in this field. And learning with humility from experts is really powerful if you are serious in your pursuits. In this blog are a couple links to help you out - we have the link to a hard copy of this book via Amazon or to Audible, if you are not yet a member and are interested! Yay for Market Mamas sponsorship from Amazon and Audible, we are so grateful!!
The E-Myth Revisited has a 4.6 star rating on audible with nearly 15,000 ratings!
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