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Why? Why
do so many businesses fail? Is it because of the economy?
Is it because of high interest rates? Is it because
of lack of sufficient capital? Is it because a bigger
business moved in next door, or is it just bad luck? The
fact is, it is none of those things. For every one
thousand business failures, you’ll find a handful of others
that succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations and
under exactly the same circumstances and in exactly the
same business.
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The difference
is their point of view about what a business is, and what
one isn’t. The difference is that these business owners
were all entrepreneurs, and that the vast majority of
the people who go into business in this country aren’t.
And that’s what the E-Myth is all about. It stands
for the Entrepreneurial Myth. It’s the mistaken
belief that the vast majority of people who go into business
in this country are entrepreneurs, and it just isn’t true.
The vast majority of people who go into business in this
country are not entrepreneurs; they’re technicians suffering
from an entrepreneurial seizure. And that is the
problem with their businesses. Its not that they’ve
chosen the wrong business or a bad business, its not that
they don’t have enough money, or that it is a bad economy.
Or they can’t find and keep good people. It
is that they started their business with an absolutely
unworkable point of view.
A fatal assumption
that every technician who decides to go into business
makes is that, if they understood the technical work of
a business, they automatically understand how to run a
business that does that technical work. So the Carpenter
becomes a Contractor, and the Mechanic opens up an Auto
Repair Shop and the Machinist opens up a Machine Shop,
the Beautician opens up a Beauty Shop, and the Printer
opens up a Print Shop and the professional opens a practice.
Each and every one of them, believing that because they
understand how to build a house, or how to fix a car,
or how to run a machine that they are automatically qualified
to run a business that does that work. And it simply
isn’t true.
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Running a business
that builds a house, or fixes a car, or runs a machine,
is totally different than doing the work. Doing the work
is what a technician does. Creating the business that
works is what an entrepreneur does. And that is the
problem with almost every small business in the world. The
owner of the business is the technician suffering from entrepreneurial
seizure, who goes to work in his business and creates a
job for himself, rather than going to work on his business,
like an entrepreneur would, to create a business that works.
So his business ends up being the worst job in the
world, because he can’t leave it. Because, he built
the business around himself. Because in order for his business
to work he has to. And he doesn’t realize that it
simply doesn’t have to be that way.
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