{"id":100,"date":"2009-06-15T07:00:28","date_gmt":"2009-06-15T07:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/blog\/?p=100"},"modified":"2013-02-01T23:57:26","modified_gmt":"2013-02-02T04:57:26","slug":"the-e-myth-revisited-and-a-business-type-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/the-e-myth-revisited-and-a-business-type-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe E-Myth\u201d and a Business-Type Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0887307280\/deltamuse-20\">The E-Myth\u00a0Revisited<\/a>,\u00a0<a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Michael Gerber (non-fiction writer)\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michael_Gerber_%28non-fiction_writer%29\">Michael Gerber<\/a> summarized the three phases of any business: Infancy, Adolescence, and Maturity. Here&#8217;s the gist of each:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Infancy:<\/strong> <strong>The business-owner <em>is<\/em> the business.<\/strong> Every aspect of the company is ran by its founder, including production work, marketing, business planning, and everything else. If the owner isn&#8217;t there, the business doesn&#8217;t exist.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Adolescence: <\/strong>Business is picking up, and the owner becomes overwhelmed with the amount of work to be done. She <strong>hires somebody to do the dirty work<\/strong> she doesn&#8217;t want to do, whether it&#8217;s bookkeeping, inventory, sales, or other necessary duties. The owner is still wrapped up in the business, though.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Maturity:<\/strong> Many businesses, from <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"NYSE: UPS\" rel=\"yahoofinance\" href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/q?s=UPS\">UPS<\/a> to <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"McDonald's\" rel=\"homepage\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mcdonalds.com\/\">McDonald&#8217;s<\/a>, <em>began<\/em> at a Mature level. The founders started right off with a plan to create something more than themselves, an <strong>organism that would work without their presence<\/strong>. Gerber calls this &#8220;working <em>on<\/em> your business, not <em>in <\/em>your business.&#8221; In other words, creating a company built on systems and processes that doesn&#8217;t involve your work frees you to build the business and eventually leave it to run on its own.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Even with those thoughts in mind, I&#8217;m still <strong>leaning toward starting with an Infant business<\/strong>. Sure, it&#8217;s high-work, uphill to start, but I think it&#8217;ll be rewarding &#8212; especially if I can make it to that amazing Adolescent stage on my own. Once I have that awful problem of having customers knocking down my door, I&#8217;ll think about changing it to a Mature business. Until then, I&#8217;m ready to enjoy the ride!<\/p>\n<p><em>What phase is your business in? What do you want it to eventually become? How do you plan to get there?<\/em><\/p>\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\">Related articles by Zemanta<\/h6>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul\">\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.prweb.com\/releases\/2010\/06\/prweb4160954.htm\">E-Myth and BEI to Deliver Proven Business Exit and Succession Planning System<\/a> (prweb.com)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kevinwmccarthy.com\/my_weblog\/2010\/05\/are-your-prepositions-working.html\">Are Your Prepositions Working?<\/a> (kevinwmccarthy.com)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.brighthub.com\/office\/entrepreneurs\/articles\/39015.aspx\">Top Three Reasons Entrepreneurs Fail<\/a> (brighthub.com)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?x-id=8e0c7a09-a4f2-4894-8c36-9dc3a33c020c\" alt=\"\" \/><span class=\"zem-script more-related pretty-attribution\"><script src=\"http:\/\/static.zemanta.com\/readside\/loader.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In The E-Myth\u00a0Revisited,\u00a0Michael Gerber summarized the three phases of any business: Infancy, Adolescence, and Maturity. Here&#8217;s the gist of each: Infancy: The business-owner is the business. Every aspect of the company is ran by its founder, including production work, marketing, business planning, and everything else. If the owner isn&#8217;t there, the business doesn&#8217;t exist. Adolescence:&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[42,43,44,45,46,47],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biz","tag-business-type","tag-company-planning","tag-e-myth-revisited","tag-growth-phases","tag-michael-gerber","tag-structure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":968,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}