Las Vegas (Jan. 15, 2004) -- Unflagging routine erases the workplace spirit and true entrepreneurs must employ a “counter-intuitive” strategy to succeed, Michael Gerber, author of a controversial best-seller on the myths of small business, told a group of CPAs.
“Your business means nothing if you pay the price of your life for it,” said Gerber, author of The E-Myth: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It. “There’s only one reason for creating a business and that’s to sell it. Most people who own a business are technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure. They just keep doing it, doing it, doing it.”
Gerber, chairman of Santa Rosa, Calif.-based E-Myth Worldwide, delivered the opening-day keynote address this week at the Winning Is Everything Conference, here. “If you own an accounting firm, stop accounting,” he said. “If you own a medical practice stop doctoring. A technician is the one who dis-enables any organization to the ground. There are no turnkey systems at the bottom of small businesses, just people doing the best that they can.”
“Experience is the worst teacher in the world,” Gerber said. “It’s a part from your company as opposed to a part of your company.” Gerber recounted the vision of McDonald’s Corp. founder Ray Kroc, who acquired the franchise rights of the burger concept from the McDonald brothers, never made a single hamburger or milk shake, yet put the systems in place to franchise out the concept and create the most successful small business in the world. “McDonald’s is systems-dependent, not people-dependent,” he said. “You should be working not on the business you have, but the business you don’t.”
“I’m typically not delighted to be with my accountant,” Gerber joked with attendees, most of whom were partners at CPA firms. “Please don’t give me your card.”
-- Bill Carlino
