Success Book ~ The E Myth Revisited

Excerpt from The E Myth Revisited written by Michael E. Gerber

Adolescent Survival
The most tragic possibility of all for an adolescent business is that it actually survives.
You’re incredibly strong willed, stubborn, single-minded individual who’s determined not to be beaten.
You go into your business every morning with a vengeance, absolutely convinced that it’s a jungle out there and fully committed to doing whatever’s necessary to survive.
And you do survive. Kicking and scratching, beating up your people and your customers, ranting and raving at your family and friends – because, after all, you’ve got to keep the business going. And you know there’s only one way to do it; you’ve got to be there – all the time.

In adolescent survival you’re consumed by the business and the possibilities of losing it.
And so you put everything you have into it.
And, for whatever reason, you manage to keep it going. Day after day, fighting the same battles, in exactly the same way as you did the day before.
Night after night, you go home to unwind, only to wind up even tighter in anticipation of tomorrow. Finally, your business doesn’t explode, you do!

You’re like a twelve cylinder engine working on one cylinder, pumping away, trying with everything you’ve got to produce twelve cylinders worth of results.

But finally and inevitably there’s nothing left.
There’s simply nothing more you can do except face the fact that one cylinder can’t produce the results of twelve, no matter how hard it tries.

Something has to give, and that something is you.
Does this sound familiar?

Well, if you’ve been in business for a while, it should.
And if you haven’t been in business for long, it probably will sound familiar one day.
Because the tragedy is that the condition of infancy and adolescence dominates American small business.
It is the condition in most of the small businesses we at GERBER have visited over the past seventeen years, a condition of rampant confusion and wasted spirits.
It doesn’t need to happen. There is a better way.

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The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

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