The goal for this blog is to share my ideas with clients and give potential clients some insight into the way I think. It is not to directly market my services, however one of the benefits for being self employed is I can do whatever I want! So in that spirit I’m writing this post to combine a bit of useful information with some blatant self-promotion.
In my last we read by Michael E. Gerber. I found the style of writing a bit tiring, involving the combination of educational ideas with some story telling about a (hypothetical?) client of Michael’s named Sarah. However, there were some very simple and valuable lessons in the book which is why it is one of the most widely known books amongst small business people.
The main theme of the book is the idea of the “E-Myth” – the myth that all small business people are entrepreneurs. The book makes the distinction between three types of business people, or more accurately, three traits possessed by business people. All people have the three traits, just in different amounts. The traits are:
The Entrepreneur – the big picture thinker that loves starting businesses but doesn’t necessarily love managing the business from day to day, or even doing the work inside the business. They are frustrated when other people in the business don’t share their longer term vision or love of constant change.
The Manager – the person that loves building systems and measuring results in order to keep a business running, and believes the key to success is efficiency and keeping the technician under control.
The Technician – the person who loves doing the work in the business, and just wishes the entrepreneur and the manager would leave them alone to get stuff – after all, they are the person with the technical skills to get the job done so they obviously know best.
Going back to the E-Myth, Gerber suggests that most small businesses are started and run by “technicians”, often with the dream that it will allow them to do what they love without a boss constantly looking over their shoulder. Those technicians often lack the skills of the manager (the ability or desire to create systems, measure results and set up the business to run without them) and the entrepreneur (having the vision to see what the market needs and delivering that.. instead of just doing what they feel most comfortable with), yet those skills are vital to the success of any business. They may often find, after two years without a holiday and no prospect of taking one anytime soon, that having a boss wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
This message immediately resonated with me as the single biggest idea driving me in the establishment of my business was that most small business people are, in my language, experts at what they do, but aren’t necessarily passionate about the general management of the business in areas such as finance, market research, business analysis, marketing, internet strategy, etc. My goal is to help small business people develop these skills (as a coach) and also to use my knowledge and passion in those areas to immediately bring those skills into the business (as a consultant/contractor).
E-Myth Worldwide, Michael’s consulting business, lists five core principles that it’s consultants teach to their clients. Rather than just listing them, I have added in the self-promotion that I warned you about earlier and have provided examples of how I have helped my clients in each of the five areas (as both a coach and a consultant):
| Principle | Description | My role as Coach | My Role as Consultant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Life | Build a business to suit the owner’s desired way of living, not letting the business dictate how they live their lives | Become a trusted adviser that my clients can talk to about why they are in business and how to change their business to meet their goals. Refer here and here for two testimonials for clients who I have helped in this area. | Once I understand my clients’ goals, I can help in areas such as the development of a vision for the business, a business plan to help realise that vision, and then hands-on assistance putting that plan into action. |
| Leadership | Becoming a leader in the business, not just the senior technician | Understand how my clients approach their role as leader and discuss with them what they can do to improve. A common trait of leaders who are still technicians at heart is to micro-manage their staff – they do this because they don’t know how to lead (ie. how to inspire, support and engage with their staff) and instead fall back on just telling them how to do things… often leading to frustration when their staff don’t respond to that style of management. Just being made aware that they are doing this can be a great start to changing for the better. | I observe their management style and speak with their staff to see if what they do is the same as what they think they are doing. If the business is large enough, I can examine ways to bring new leadership skills into the team by hiring new staff or developing existing staff in addition to helping my clients improve personally. |
| Work on your business, not in it | Allocate time to the general management of the business – vision, business plan, etc, and don’t go on believing that simply working harder, yet essentially doing the same thing, will yield dramatic improvements. | Talk with my clients about how they can slowly let go of some of the technical work within the business, often involving discussions on hiring new staff or upskilling existing staff who can then be trusted with that additional responsibility, so my clients can spend more time as a leader and manager within the business | The reason for wanting the owner to work “on” the business is because the business needs somebody doing that in order to survive and ultimately succeed. However, it is not always possible for the owner of a small business to take significant time away from the day to day work, and in those cases I can help by simply doing some of that strategic work for them – see this testimonial as an example of how I completed a major project for a client which helped improve the business without my client having to take time away from their clients. |
| Systemisation | The need to build systems within the business – not just IT systems, but systems for selling, hiring, actually doing the work, measuring results, etc – in order to help the business run in the short term, and create a business that can be sold for a decent price in the longer term | Using my background in funds management, I can help clients understand what a potential investor or outright buyer of the business would like to see – that is not a business that relies on one or two key people, but a business with systems in place so that it can survive the loss of those key people, and thus be sold so someone who can run it themselves once the founder exits the company | I have built a range of systems for clients, from complete financial models of the business that help my clients understand the key drivers of their business to specific systems for things like monitoring staff productivity and calculating performance based bonuses. |
| Business development cycle | Not “business development” being a sexy way of describing selling, but the literal definition meaning the development of the business – constant monitoring, analysing and improving the business to make it better | My role in this area is to ask questions and provide new ideas on how to improve the business. As Jack Welch said in one of my favorite quotes from his book, Winning: “When you get more people in the conversation, to state the obvious, you get idea rich… …Any organisation – or unit or team – that brings more people and their minds into the conversation has an immediate advantage”. | As mentioned in systemisation above, my role often involves analysis of the business and the implementation of systems to help with that process, followed by the implementation of the ideas that my clients and I develop together. |
And one final piece of self-promotion…
If you enjoyed this post and have any friends in small business that you think may be feeling like their businesses aren’t growing the way they hoped, or could just use a few ideas or a helping hand, I would be very grateful if you could forward them a link to this article. I would love the opportunity to spend some time with them to discuss their business with absolutely no obligation to take things any further.
