Of the thousands of business books published in the last 30 years, only a handful have withstood the assaults of changing times and changing objectives to remain as relevant today as when they first came out. This week we present five books worthy of space on any entrepreneur’s shelf–now and in the future.
Today’s book, The E-Myth by Michael Gerber.
This small-business consultant’s sharpest observation was that most business owners know a lot about producing whatever it is they sell, but a lot less about running the business. The publication and popularity of this book and Gerber’s numerous titles that followed it caused countless business owners to reexamine what they were doing.
Gerber’s mantra of “Work on your business, not in your business” powerfully refocuses the business owner’s attention away from being what amounts to self-employed employees and toward figuring out how to make their small companies run better. Essentially, he advised systematizing as many jobs as possible through the use of manuals, policies and the like, until practically anyone could run the business as well as the founder.
Especially in his later E-Myth Mastery, Gerber lays out an approach to systematizing a growing business unmatched in scope and sophistication. Growing a company much beyond the capabilities of its creator still requires skills beyond that of a technician. Gerber’s work is the prime repository of that knowledge for businesses.
Photo by HarperCollins Publishers.
FranchiseBrief.com on May 2nd, 2007 at 11:45 am
I keep hearing great things about this book. I have to read it!!!