Awakening the Entrepreneur Within—with Michael E. Gerber

Being a small business owner does not mean you have to keep your vision small. After all, to become big requires you to begin with what little you have. Renowned author of The E-Myth, Michael E. Gerber, is no stranger to starting small. In his seminal book, Michael dispels the myths surrounding starting and growing a business, and his teachings have inspired tens of thousands of business owners to stop working in their businesses, and start working ON their businesses. Today, he shares that wisdom with us, including the a-ha moment of how his seminal book came to be. He talks about the building blocks of growing and scaling a small business, touching on the most important ingredients—dream, vision, purpose, and mission. In this episode, awaken the entrepreneur within YOU and get inspired to take the steps needed to bring your business to the next level.

Plus, Michael E. Gerber has a special offer for our listeners: receive a copy of Michael E. Gerber’s latest book by visiting freebook.michaelegerber.com and check out his Online Trade School for Entrepreneurs at www.radicalu.com.

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Awakening the Entrepreneur Within with Michael E. Gerber [Transcript]

I’m very excited about this episode. If you’ve known me for a while, you probably have heard the phrase, “It’s time to work on your business, not in your business.” That phrase was first coined by the one and only Michael E. Gerber. As a small business owner myself, in earlier years I was struggling to figure out my next step, trying to fix this piece and that piece of my business. Until one day, I discovered Michael E. Gerber and The E-Myth, and it completely changed my perspective. The ideas Michael E. Gerber shared in his book were not only revolutionary for me, but I have continued to share his message with the many people and entrepreneurs I’ve come in contact with throughout the years.

Today I have the honor and the opportunity of interviewing Michael E. Gerber. We spoke about how a small business can grow and scale, and the most important ingredients are for the success of a small business. We touched on how to create a dream, the vision, the purpose and the mission. We spoke about the importance of thinking about your business the same way Ray Kroc thought about McDonald’s. We also spoke about how you as a leader are an important part of that transformation. Pay attention to these golden nuggets of wisdom as you read this episode.

Michael, thank you so much for being on the show. It’s such a pleasure and an honor to speak to you.

It’s my delight being here. I loved being with you at the event we did together. I was deeply inspired by the extraordinary response from your audience. We could have gone on for hours after hours. I’m thrilled to be here and speak to you about anything you’d like to talk about.

For the audience, I want to start off how I got to know you a little bit and why I brought you to speak at our event and why we are speaking now. It goes back many years ago when I was a small, tiny business and I went to a conference that had 45 people. You were the keynote speaker. I never heard about anything, only about struggles in business. You opened my eyes to a concept that didn’t exist in my life. I bought the book and read it from cover to cover and that was like the lightning rod of inspiring me on how to inspire others. It’s not only what you do that inspired me, but in the last eighteen years, I was able to inspire many business owners and businesspeople with the concepts that I’ve learned in The E-Myth. It’s been an amazing experience.

Just to touch on having you speak at our event, I had somebody that reached out to me. He said, “The last few years was not the same after hearing Michael speak at our LTB, Let’s Talk Business Conference.” I figured I have a lot of follow-up questions to that interview and this would be a great platform to speak about them. I want to start with something personal. You’re not young. You’re over 80. We celebrated a few years ago your 80th birthday and you’ve done this for over 40 years now. It’s not like you weren’t successful. You have accomplished and transformed so many businesses and lives of people. Some people in your age would be retired, sitting at the beach or in their second home. What is it that drives you to continue to motivate and inspire people even in this age and even after 40 years of doing it?

Truthfully, I don’t think about it. It’s something that possessed me all these years. I’ve discovered a voice within me that said, “This is what I’m here to do.” You know the expression, “We’re born in the image of God.” If we’re born in the image of God, it says to me we’re born to create. If we’re born to create, we’re born to create a world fit for God. That’s what I wake up with every morning, that I haven’t yet completed what I’m set out to do and it pursues me continuously. In short, I have no thought of stopping.

Sometimes we find our calling and we are motivated for the calling that we don’t even look at the accomplishments. We look at what we still have to accomplish. This on its own is a lesson for our audience that even if you look back and see how much you have accomplished, know there’s so much more out there and this is an inspiring lesson from you, Michael. Let’s go back even a little bit more. The E-Myth is a system. It’s a transformational moment that you teach to many people and now over thirteen books and many different programs and many different languages that it was translated into. Share with me when did you get that a-ha moment? What transpired in your thinking process that you said, “This is something revolutionizing,” that you could show other people how they could get out of their doing it, doing it and get to build those empires?

It wasn’t something that I thought I do. It wasn’t something that I thought I’d pursue. I was on my way from doing one thing to moving up to Northern California to do another thing. I stopped by to visit with my sister and my brother-in-law. During the week I was there, my brother-in-law who owned a small advertising agency in Silicon Valley, asked me if I would visit a client of his who was having great difficulty converting the leads that my brother-in-law’s ad agency was creating for him into sales. I said to my brother-in-law, whose name was and is Ace, “I don’t know anything about business and above all, I don’t know anything about high tech.” He said, “Michael, you know more than you think you do. Just do this and let’s see what happens.” I said, “Sure.”

I went with Ace to visit Bob who owned a small high-tech firm. Ace introduces me to Bob, “Bob, this is Michael. Michael, this is Bob. You spend an hour together, see what happens and I’ll be back to pick Michael up,” and Ace took off. Bob asked me, not knowing me and not knowing anything about me and only knowing Ace, “Michael, what do you know about my business?” I said, “Nothing.” He looked at me a little disgruntled because his watch is saying he’s got an hour to sit with somebody who doesn’t know anything about his business. He asked me a further question, “If you don’t know anything about my business, what do you know about my product?” I said, “Less than that, Bob.” Bob looked at me like we’re both out of our minds and asked me the obvious question, “How can you help me, Michael? If you don’t know anything about my business and you don’t know anything about my product, what are we going to do for the next hour?” I said, “I guess all we can do is pursue the questions. What is your business? What is your product? What is your problem? Why aren’t you able to convert your leads into sales and see what comes out of it?”

[bctt tweet=”99% of all small business owners start a small business to make a living. They don’t start a small business to make a difference.” username=””]

You’ve got to understand that I had two assumptions entering into that meeting. First of all, I didn’t know anything about business. The second was that because Bob owned a business, he did. The questions began. “What about this?” The more questions I asked Bob, the more I understood his answers to be anecdotal. In short, I began to discover that not only didn’t I know anything about business, but Bob didn’t and he owned one. That was astonishing to me. The second thing that happened was I understood that I did know something about business. I knew that selling is a system and I knew that because I learned at a much younger age how to sell encyclopedias door-to-door. When I went to the interview with a bunch of other people, the guy said, “How many of you are experienced salespeople?” Whoever was there and thought of themselves as experienced salespeople, he then said, “That’s good. All of you, please leave.”

That was astonishing, “All of you, please leave.” The only ones he wanted there were people who had no experience. He gave me and those of us who continued in the interview a script about fifteen minutes’ worth. He said, “Go home, memorize that script, come back tomorrow morning at 9:00 and say it to me.” I was one of maybe a half dozen who showed up the next day. I said the script. You’ve got to understand, I’ve been playing the saxophone for a long time. I knew how to memorize music. I knew how to memorize stuff because I did that. I memorized it. I had it cold and then I said it to him. He said, “It’s a great start. Listen to me say it.” He repeated exactly what I said, but he repeated it in a completely different way. He said, “Let me say that again.” He repeated it in exactly the same way he said it the first time. He said, “Now, you do it.” That was the beginning of my relationship with the world as what Inc. Magazine calls me the World’s Number One Small Business Guru. At that moment my future was set because I came to realized that I knew something that it seemed to me so few other people knew. Selling is a system but it’s not just that, management is a system. Marketing is a system. Money is a system. Everything is a system.

What you’re saying is true because once you have that system in place, it changes from growing a company to running a company to scaling a company. Most business owners and I don’t know the statistics, but we say so many business owners fail. Collectively, they made millions of dollars but they still failed. It’s not about growing business and doing it. It’s about figuring out how you’re scaling. I guess systems is where it goes from doing it and maybe growing it but really scaling it. Am I correct?

You’re correct, but let me add a dimension to it that’s critical. As I began to coach Bob to create his selling system, it transformed the way he did business. Ace asks me to do it with another client and then another client so my plan on going further North was completely obliterated. I was suddenly doing something I had never done in my life. I was 41 years of age. I hear these stories of folks who tell me, “I started out my entrepreneurial career when I was twelve, selling lemonade,” or this or that. Everybody tells me these stories about how they were inspired to become an entrepreneur at a very young age, I wasn’t.

I wasn’t even inspired to become an entrepreneur. I was inspired by the experience of seeing what was missing in this picture. Every single one of these companies I visited without any knowledge whatsoever about business. I didn’t start this knowing anything. I started this experiencing something and as I began to experience it, the question kept on nagging me, “What’s missing in this picture?” To answer your question, when did the moment strike me that in fact set the pace for everything I’ve been doing all these years? I was going from one client to another client and I stopped to have lunch at McDonald’s. I walked into McDonald’s for a hamburger and I walked out of McDonald’s with the dream. I walked into McDonald’s for a hamburger and I never got that hamburger because as I walked into McDonald’s, I suddenly saw McDonald’s in a completely unusual and original way.

I saw McDonald’s as a comprehensive system. A visual, emotional, functional and financial system and effectively none of the small business owners I was speaking to understood, had ever done, comprehended or whatever. At that moment, I realized that McDonald’s was to become the turnkey model that I would use to express to every small business owner I spoke to from that point on. You’ve got to go to work on your company like Ray Kroc did to build his franchise prototype for the obvious reasons that until you did that, you couldn’t scale it. In short, you couldn’t grow it exponentially. That’s what happened. That’s what then pursued and has pursued me ever since. That’s what I speak to small business owners about. It doesn’t matter what kind of company it is and you know that.

This is a very valuable lesson and this is something I borrowed from you. Let’s call it using the, “On the business versus in the business.” What would you say to that small business owner that says, “I don’t even have the time to work on my business because I’m servicing my clients?” I want you to answer that person. What should be an answer to a person like that says, “I’m stuck doing it that I don’t even know what is my first step even to this process?”

I would say to that person, “Stop and let’s begin again.” Let’s begin as though you had all the time in the world. Let’s begin with the question. What would happen if I could effectively devote my time to designing, building, launching and growing that franchise prototype that Ray Kroc at 52 years of age launched in that McDonald’s hamburger stands in Des Plaines, Illinois? What would and could happen if your mind were changed to such a degree that you realized the least important thing you’ll have to do is to work with every single one of your clients? The least important thing you have to do is to do it like you’re doing it every day. What would happen if your mind changed and you suddenly saw the world in a completely different way? That’s what we’re going to do together. We’re not going to tell you, “You’ve got to.” We’re going to simply open with a question, “What if you could?” and then we’re going to begin to understand the profound impact that’s going to have not only on your life, but your family’s life, your employees’ lives, your clients’ lives, your customers’ lives, the people they associate with their lives. Every single person you touch will be touched by a miracle. What if that could happen? That’s what we’re going to talk about.

This is so powerful and telling a person to stop that is a lesson on its own. People go on and on, not even stopping for a second, “Am I doing the right thing? Do I have something here?”

Because you understand he does have the time. He’s wasting time every single day. He doesn’t know that because he’s consumed by doing it. He’s consumed by a technician’s mind and that’s the chief cook and bottle washer, the doer. He’s habituated to this stupid frame of mind. It’s got to be stopped and the only way it can be stopped is if he’s stopped the direct, loving and meaningful way and engaged in a new conversation.

[bctt tweet=”The business is being created by the person. There is no business before there’s a person.” username=””]

Let’s speak to that person. They stopped, where do they go from there?

The first thing they do is they either read The E-Myth Revisited and begin to talk about it like I did with Sarah in The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It. Why the book? It’s to open up his mind to see that a small business is significantly other than what his small business is. His small business is reproduced to what we’ve said now repeatedly doing it and being busy but there is no meaning to it other than making a living. 99% of all small business owners start a small business to make a living. They don’t start a small business to make a difference. They don’t start a small business to realize some greater purpose in their life. They’re not driven by a dreamlike Steve Jobs was. They’re not driven by a vision. They’re not driven by a purpose. They’re not driven by a mission.

You understand the dreamer, the thinker, the storyteller, the leader who are the four critical personalities of an entrepreneur are absent in almost every single small business I’ve walked into. All they want me to help them to do is to get more sales. Why do they want me to get more sales? Because they think that the problem in their business is it’s not making enough money. Of course, that’s a problem in their business, but that’s not the real problem. It’s not making enough money because it’s not doing what it is there to do in a way that will transform what it’s there to do and the meaning of it. I’d love to say, “It’s not the money, it’s the meaning.”

You might call it spiritual economics. What’s the meaning of your company? What’s the meaning of your life? What’s your legacy that you’re leaving? What is it that you’re here to do in your life to transform the lives of every person you connect with to the degree that it’s all possible? That’s what drives me all the time. Not because I’m a better person, I’m a smarter person or I’m a more spiritual person. It’s not that at all. It’s that it came to me and I heard it. I could never let go of it from that point forward.

It’s amazing to see once you get that light bulb on a business owner and they start grasping what The E-Myth is all about, they start saying, “Now, I’ve found a path. I’m doing it for so long and I felt like a failure. I felt like this is not going places, but at least now I found a path.” They could slowly but surely get into that mindset and then put that mindset into action, which is also important. From your experience working with many businesses, what are the ingredients of a business failing? Is it based on the systems? Is there anything other than that or is it also dependent on the leader? Are the systems important and the leadership important? Is the leadership important because they’ve got the systems? How do you balance the person and the business?

You have to understand, the business is being created by the person. There is no business before there’s a person. There’s no reason for a business unless there’s a person, whether that person is the customer, the client, the employee, the owner, the manager and so forth. It’s all here because there’s a person. The person is significant to everything that goes on in that business. The question becomes, “How do you approach that person?” In short, “How do you relate to that person systemically?” From my perspective and what captured me when I walked into that McDonald’s hamburger stand, I could have walked in any other time and bought a hamburger. I could have done this any other time to buy a hamburger. Something was right within me at the moment that I walked in there. There was a question in my mind.

There was something that’s nagging at me. There was a client problem that I couldn’t correct. There was a problem with communication that was stopping me and then I walked into McDonald’s and I saw the solution completely. It completely took me away. I didn’t do anything. I was simply on a path to discover something. Because I was so awake, alive and energized on that greater path, that higher path, I couldn’t help but be moved by the visual, emotional, functional and financial things that appeared to me. I didn’t know anything about business when I started this out at 41 years of age. I wasn’t inspired by business. I was simply a wandering Jew. I was doing whatever I was doing and suddenly this appears to me and it came to me when I met Bob.

I said, “I never even realized there was a possibility like this.” It’s everywhere. What I’m saying is how do you include the person? You have to wake the person up. All my work has been doing awakening the entrepreneur within every single person I can speak to, to demonstrate to them that I’m not here to motivate them. I’m here to lead them into a conversation that will inevitably inspire them to discover something about their lives and so forth that they’ve never discovered before. That’s exactly what happened to you when you heard me speak with those 45 people in that seminar, wherever it was.

It was in Phoenix, Arizona many years ago.

Think about that, ever since you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing and touching the lives of all those great Jewish people in a way that you would never have. You came there to hear something and to learn something. Something was missing in your picture. Something was missing in your life. Something was missing in what you were doing and you couldn’t figure it out and suddenly, I expressed it so clearly that you got it and it was moved within you. We’re born in the image of God, the Creator within.

[bctt tweet=”Surviving is never enough, not to anyone.” username=””]

What got me at that point and also when I speak to business owners and I tried to share what’s in The E-Myth. The part that I found is that business owners are always looking for that next shiny object. Sometimes it’s more sales. Sometimes it’s a new technology. Sometimes it’s a better process for something, but all of a sudden you hear something which you see that there’s so much more missing, the foundation of it was missing. That’s what inspired me at that moment. A lot in the book is about awakening the entrepreneur within. Sometimes you hear a person that says, “I don’t think I have that within me. I have this business. I want to make money. I want to pay for my tuition. I want to pay my bills. Maybe I want to do some goods for society.” Speak to me about connecting those businesses that fail, how they’re connected but not having those systems in place. Why is it so important that you’re not doing it for yourself or you’re not doing it for scaling and thriving? Sometimes, it’s even for surviving.

Understand that everybody “has to survive” and that’s one level of human behavior, how to survive. It’s remarkable how we learn how to survive even under circumstances that are not survivable. Surviving is never enough, not to anyone. I’ve never met a human being for whom survival was enough. Once somebody can learn how to survive, meaning simply get by, the next question invariably is, “Then what?” Because if survival isn’t everything, it’s next to nothing, then the question is, “Then what?” On my website, you’ll see an expression that says, “Every life, a legacy,” and it’s followed by, “Every small business, a school.”

You and I, every single one of us is here to learn, but we’re not here to learn how to survive. Of course, we are but we’re here to learn how to grow. By grow, I don’t mean get more. By grow, I mean to experience all the rest of what it means to be a human being. All the rest of what it means to be alive. When you asked me, “Michael, you’re over 80 and the people who get to your age and they simply want to relax.” I’m saying there is no “relax” when you’re inspired by the unknown. You and I know we are primarily living a life in which the unknown captures the whole of it.

I don’t know anything. I have no idea about everything, which means there is this huge question which we keep on attempting to answer and almost always in a truly trivial way. Why are we here? Why is all this happening? What is all this pain about? What is all this struggle about? Why would I be thrilled continuously by the good fortune I’ve been able to attract to myself? What’s missing in this picture? The minute you can begin to engage every single small business owner you’re speaking to, in that search, something added happens. That something added is the continuous question. The continuous question stimulates, inspires and aggravates a part of me that is never ever going to be satisfied.

Let me move into a question that I get a lot when we speak about systems and The E-Myth approach to the thinking process and awakening that entrepreneur. A lot of people would say and I don’t agree with them but I want them to hear it from you, Michael, is that, “My business is different.” The systems and the stuff are people that want to achieve big successes. I am running the small business, doing it and I don’t see myself getting to that level. Why is it important? It’s not about size. It’s not about small versus big and large versus growing versus scaling. What is the direct answer to that person? That it’s not about size. It’s not about where you see yourself right now, it’s what you need to do.

The answer to that person is exactly what I’ve been speaking to and that is simply that that person hasn’t yet discovered the entrepreneur within him or her and that’s a critical thing. They have not yet discovered the creator within. They’ve not yet discovered their dream, vision, purpose and mission. They haven’t discovered the energized part of all of this activity that effectively in technical terms says, “You’re going to work on your very small business,” just like Ray Kroc went to work on his very small business, his hamburgers store, his McDonald’s but he did that with a higher vision.

When Ray Kroc went to work on that tiny hamburger stand doing it, when he went to work on perfecting the systems of that first hamburger stand, he did it because he knew that if he didn’t do it in the right way, he would never be able to open his second store. Not only that but his third, his tenth, his 37,000th. The 37,000th was made possible because he did the work on the first. I’m going to say to this person, “You’re killing this little company because you have no passion for expanding its reach to touch many people.” Think about it. First, there was one Chabad House. Now, there are over 4,000 Chabad Houses. That little franchise, that little store, that little location was there to do something transformational for the Jewish people worldwide. The Rebbe invented it, created it and launched it. It exploded with growth in a way that had never been done before. McDonald’s, Chabad, it’s the same business.

The point you’re saying is that you’re choking your small business even as is.

You are not only choking it, but you’re also choking any people who work in it and you’re choking yourself because you’re not ascending to the higher parts of yourself. You’re not growing the limited parts of yourself. You’re not learning in your small business school that every life is a legacy and that legacy is exactly what you’re doing right this moment. Is that what you want to leave for everyone? I don’t think so.

On that same note, sometimes I hear from business owners and leaders that they get it. How important is it when you’re small to bring in your team, your people to that vision to that understanding?

[bctt tweet=”It’s remarkable how we learn how to survive even under circumstances that are not survivable.” username=””]

It’s absolutely critical every single day. I had a team, the founders and key executives of a company called Infusionsoft, come to join me in the Dreaming Room. They were successful. The company at the time, I believe was about $5 million in revenue. They had no desire to grow it more. They figured that the next step would be to sell it. One of them came to me before the Dreaming Room and he said to me quizzically, “Michael, what’s this dreaming stuff?” He said, “I get The E Myth. We’re systems guys, we’re high tech guys. We understand the value of the system, but what’s this dreaming stuff? Have you gone off the edge?” I said, “Shut up, sit down and you’ll find out over the next two and a half days and if you don’t, I feel sorry for you.”

We started the Dreaming Room. At the end of that Dreaming Room, he came back to me and said, “Michael, I swear I could have never imagined what just happened, not only to me but to my partner and cofounder and to the executives who we brought along with us. I would never have anticipated it.” They went back to Infusionsoft. They painted on the wall, “Our dream, our vision, our purpose, our mission.” Every morning they got up with their people and repeated their dream, their vision, their purpose, their mission. That company grew in the next seven years to over $100 million in revenue. That company is growing to become a $1 billion company. It’s not that they’re going to become $1 billion enterprises, but they’re touching hundreds of thousands of people bringing their methodology to work in their client companies and those companies are growing.

Think about it, economic development is the most critical component of our lives next to our spiritual lives. That’s why we call it spiritual economics because in the Dreaming Room, in The E Myth, in the work we have been doing all these years, that’s what it’s all about. It’s about leading an absolutely, stunningly, original and creative life. To touch the hearts, minds and souls of every single person you come into contact with. You create a company to do that for you. Your people need to know it. Your people need to understand it. Your people need to buy into it just like everybody in McDonald’s did.

This is something that we’ve seen and as you mentioned in Infusionsoft, I’ve seen the culture within. I’ve seen how they’re touching lives and how their mission drives everyday success, not only for their company but the companies that are using their system. I’ve seen them in action. When I speak to business owners, sometimes it’s the transformation of the business owner but sometimes they need a transformation within the team as well in order to be together in this mission. Be together on that vision, see the same vision, see the same mission and ultimately drive for success. I want to end with a couple of questions. You have been doing this for over 40 years. Businesses didn’t change a lot but on the ground, things changed, from technology to loyalty within using businesses and customers and so on and so forth. What have you seen that you would say is worthwhile mentioning different trends that you see now that you didn’t see in the past or vice versa?

With everybody talking about change, change is happening faster than it ever happened before. With everybody talking about artificial intelligence, with everybody talking about these immensely sophisticated technologies, but nothing has changed at all. Simply because if you read The E-Myth Revisited and read it again, I spoke to a gentleman from the UK, who’s an immensely successful seller of companies. He told me that he had read The E-Myth twenty times. He said he reads it every year and then he may read it a second time each year, but he reads it again and again. He reads it because he says that every single thing that’s going on in the world reinforces what he read in The E-Myth Revisited. That book is a prophecy. I had nine Chabad Shluchim called me through one, his name is Levi Cunin. He called me and he said, “Michael, there are nine of us Shluchim. You think of us as rabbis in Chabad Houses here in Orange County. We’ve been reading The E-Myth Revisited and we know you’ve been inspired by Torah because the book tells itself. I laughed and I said, “Levi, not me. I’m sorry. I apologize. I’m just a wandering Jew. Torah had nothing to do with it. Michael, it had everything to do with it. Would you come to meet with us to talk about it?” It was an intriguing call. I’d never received a call like that before. I went to a Chabad House in Irvine, California.

There are nine Shluchims there. I was completely unfamiliar with Chabad. I didn’t know anything about serious Judaism. I began to talk to them and they to me. We began to ask questions and answer questions. As Levi began to tell the story of the Rebbe and how the Chabad House was born, deep sobbing tears came into his eyes. The deep love that he expressed for the Rebbe for what they were doing, etc. It came to me inside and it said, “This is why you’ve been doing the work you’ve been doing,” so that when they came, I could then give them what I’d learned and transform the state of Chabad through the operation of every Chabad House in a way that had yet to be done. I said, “Let me think about it.”

I went back home and came back with a yes. I then met with about 76, 77 Shluchims every week on the phone for two hours. I brought on board a coach who then I assigned to work with the rabbis as they were to apply what I was teaching them in their Chabad Houses. I’ve stayed on that project for over three years and I finally quit. Those rabbis were the worst clients I’ve ever had. They were impossible. They were impossible because I would say X and they would say, “Yes, but Y?” I would say Y and they would say, “Yes, but Z.” It continued this conversation and this confusion of the simple term that I was attempting to share with them. If every single small business on this planet could be inspired the way a Chabad House was inspired by the entrepreneur that was living within the Rebbe, in a way that defined all the circumstances of what it meant to be a Jew wherever you were, that would be the most wonderful thing I could ever imagine.

This captures what the conversation was all about awakening entrepreneurs within. For the readers out there, if you’re not awakened yet, if you did not read The E-Myth yet, it’s the top number one book I recommend for people that ask me. I have a list of ten. This is the number one, it never changed. This is the first book.

I want to add two things to this. First of all, I’m going to give you a free book. The name of the free book is Making It on Your Own in America (Or Wherever You Happen to Live): A Radical Journey Towards Self-Employment. You have to understand what I mean when I say radical self-employment. When you read this book that I’m going to send to you, you’ll understand it. Go to FreeBook.MichaelEGerber.com. What the book is about is the curriculum of Radical U. Radical U is the only entrepreneurial development school on the planet. We launched it on March 4th, 2018. It’s online. It’s 52 weeks a year for five consecutive years to discover your dream, vision, purpose and mission. Your client fulfillment system, your client acquisition system, your management system and your leadership system and growing from a company of one to a company of 1,000. Every single one of you and every person you’re bringing to all the things you do, this becomes foundational to everything you’re going to deliver to them. It’s a stunning achievement if I do say so myself. The beauty of it is when you go to RadicalU.com, it’s only $479.40 a year. You come online and visit the video of the week, which we’ll walk you through 52 weeks for your first year to determine your dream, vision, purpose and mission. That’s all you’ve got to do.

Once you figure those things out, the second half of it is way easier than doing it.

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You’ve been in a completely new conversation with everybody and I know that’s where you want to be.

I’ll close with that statement. A lot of people are telling me that it’s very hard to find employees and people to join your company. If you have your dream, vision, purpose and mission set up, it’s easy to attract good talent because now they say, “I’m signed up. I believe in what you are doing and I want to join this force.”

I want to grow. Every single person can awaken the entrepreneur within because every person possesses a creator within, they’re just not familiar with your creator because nobody’s ever taught you to be.

This has been amazing and I look forward to continuing our conversation. Thank you so much for the knowledge that you shared with us. It inspired me and inspired the people that I work with and the audience on this show. I look forward to continuing our conversation on another note. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

Important Links

• The E-Myth
• Michael E. Gerber
• Let’s Talk Business Conference
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
• Making It on Your Own in America (Or Wherever You Happen to Live): A Radical Journey Towards Self-Employment
• FreeBook.MichaelEGerber.com
• Radical U
• RadicalU.com
• Infusionsoft
• Dreaming Room
• https://MichaeleGerberCompanies.com

About Michael Gerber

Michael E. Gerber is the world’s #1 small business author of 13 books on entrepreneurship and small business management. His N.Y. Times bestseller, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work And What to Do About It, is utilized in 118 Universities as a foundational entrepreneurial textbook, is translated in 29 languages, and has been utilized in the creation of the curriculum of Michael E. Gerber Companies, ventures Mr. Gerber has founded in order to “Bring the Dream Back to Small Business worldwide.”

Mr. Gerber lives with his wife, Luz Delia, who is also a partner and Co-Founder of Michael E. Gerber Companies, in Carlsbad, California, designing, growing, and expanding their Dream Center, which Mrs. Gerber calls their “Campus”, to further inspire and teach the thousands of E-Myth advocates who come to them from throughout the world.